Scripture concludes all under sin that is declares all the world to be sinners that the promise by the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that beleeve This S. Bernard expresses in these words Deus nobis hoc fecit ut nostram imperfectionem ostenderet Christi avidiores nos faceret Our imperfection was sufficiently manifest by the severity of the first Covenant that the world might long for salvation by Jesus Christ For since mankinde could not be saved by the Covenant of works that is of exact obedience they must perish for ever or else hope to be sav'd by a Covenant of ease and remission that is such a Covenant as may secure Mans duty to God and Gods mercy to Man and this is the Covenant which God made with mankinde in Christ Jesus the Covenant of Repentance This Covenant began immediately after Adams fall For as soon as the first Covenant the Covenant of works was broken God promised to make it up by an instrument of mercy which himself would finde out The Seed of the woman should make up the breaches of the man But this should be acted and published in its own time not presently In the mean time man was by virtue of that new Covenant or promise admitted to Repentance Adam confessed his sin and repented Three hundred years together did he mourn upon the mountains of India and God promised him a Saviour by whose obedience his repentance should be accepted And when God did threaten the old world with a floud of waters he called upon them to repent but because they did not God brought upon them the floud of waters For 120. years together he called upon them to return before he would strike his final blow Ten times God tried Pharaoh before he destroyed him And in all ages in all periods and with all men God did deal by this measure and excepting that God in some great cases or in the beginning of a Sanction to establish it with the terror of a great example he scarce ever destroyed a single man with temporal death for any nicety of the law but for long and great prevarications of it and when he did otherwise he did it after the man had been highly warned of the particular and could have obeyed easily which was the case of the man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath and was like the case of Adam who was upon the same account judged by the Covenant of works This then was an emanation both of Gods justice and his mercy Until man had sinned he was not the subject of mercy and if he had not then receiv'd mercy the infliction had been too severe and unjust since the Covenant was beyond the measures of man after it began to multiply into particular laws and man by accident was lessen'd in his strengths From hence the corollaries are plain 1. God was not unjust for beginning his entercourse with mankind by the Covenant of works for these reasons 1. Because Man had strengths enough to doe it until he lessen'd his own abilities 2. The Covenant of works was at first instanc'd but in a small Commandement in abstaining from the fruit of one tree when he had by him very many others for his use and pleasure 3. It was necessary that the Covenant of works should begin for the Covenant of faith and repentance could not be at first there was no need of it no opportunity for it it must suppose a defailance or an infirmity as physick supposes sickness and mortality 4. God never exacted the obedience of Man by strict measures by the severity of the first Covenant after Adams fall but men were sav'd then as now they were admitted to repentance and justified by faith and the works of faith And therefore the Jews say that three things were before the world The Law the name of the Messias and Repentance 1 Cor. 2.7 that is as S. Paul better expresses it This Repentance through faith in the Messias is the hidden wisdome of God ordained before the world unto our glory So that at first it was not impossible and when it was it was not exacted in the impossible measure but it was kept in pretence and overture for ends of piety wisdome and mercy of which I have given account it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a wise dispensation but it was hidden For since it is essentiall to a law that it be in a matter that is possible Plato lib 5. de leg Demosth contra Timocratem Plutar. in Solon Curius Fortunatianus Rhet. Nemo obligatur ad impossibile it cannot be suppos'd that God would judge man by an impossible Commandement A good man would not doe it much lesse the righteous and mercifull Judge of Men and Angels But God by holding over the world the Covenant of works non fecit praevaricatores sed humiles did not make us sinners by not observing the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the minutes and tittles of the law but made us humble needing mercy begging grace longing for a Saviour relying upon a better Covenant waiting for better promises praying for the Spirit of grace repenting of our sins deploring our infirmities and justified by faith in the promises of God 2. This then is the great introduction and necessity of repentance We neither could have liv'd without it nor have understood the way of the Divine Justice nor have felt any thing of his most glorious attribute But the admission of us to repentance is the great verification of his justice and the most excellent expression of his mercy This is the mercy of God in Jesus Christ springing from the fountains of grace purchas'd by the bloud of the Holy Lamb the Eternal sacrifice promised from the beginning always ministred to mans need in the secret Oeconomy of God but proclaim'd to all the world at the revelation of God incarnate the first day of our Lord Jesus But what are we eased now under the Gospel which is a Law of greater holiness and more Commandements and a sublimer purity in which we are tied to more severity then ever man was bound to under any institution and Covenant If the Law was an impossible Commandement who can say he hath strictly and punctually perform'd the injunctions of the Gospel Is not the little finger of the Son heavier then the Fathers loyns Here therefore it is to be inquired Whether the Commandements of Jesus Christ be as impossible to be kept as the Law of Moses If we by Christ be tied to more holiness then the sons of Israel were by Moses Law then because that could not be kept then neither can this But if we be not tied to more then they how is the law of Christ a more perfect institution and how can we now be justified by a law no better then that by which we could not be justified But then if this should be as impossible as ever why is it anew imposed why is it held over us when the
without the revelations of the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Suidas An animal man that is a Philosopher or a rational man such as were the Greek and Roman Philosophers upon the stock and account of the learning of all their Schools could never discern the excellencies of the Gospel mysteries as of God incarnate Christ dying Resurrection of the body and the like For this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Animal and another word used often by the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Carnal are opposed to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Spiritual and are states of evil or of imperfection in which while a man remains he cannot do the work of God For animality which is a relying upon natural principles without revelation is a state privatively oppos'd to the Spirit and a man in that state cannot be sav'd because he wants a vital part he wants the spirit which is a part of the constitution of a Christian in that capacity who consists of Body and Soul and Spirit and therefore Anima without Spiritus the Soul without the Spirit is not sufficient * For as the Soul is a sufficient principle of all the actions of life in order to our natural end and persection but it can bear us no further so there must be another principle in order to a supernatural end and that is the Spirit called by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the new creation by S. Peter a divine nature and by this we become renewed in the inner man the infusion of this new nature into us is called Regeneration and it is the great principle of godliness called Grace or the Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The seed of God and by it we are begotten by God and brought forth by the Church to the hopes and beginnings of a new life and a supernatural end And although I cannot say that this is a third substance distinct from Soul and Body yet it is a distinct principle put into us by God without which we cannot work and by which we can and therefore if it be not a substance yet it is more then a Metaphor it is a real being permanent and inherent but yet such as can be lessen'd and extinguish'd But Carnality or the state of being in the flesh is not onely privatively oppos'd but contrarily also to the spiritual state or the state of Grace But as the first is not a sin deriv'd from Adam so neither is the second The first is onely an imperfection or want of supernatural aids The other is indeed a direct state of sin and hated by God but superinduc'd by choice and not descending naturally * Now to the spiritual state nothing is in Scripture oppos'd but these two and neither of these when it is sinful can be pretended upon the stock or argument of any Scriptures to descend from Adam therefore all the state of opposition to Grace is owing to our selves and not to him Adam indeed did leave us all in an Animal estate but this state is not a state of enmity or direct opposition to God but a state insufficient and imperfect No man can perish for being an Animal man that is for not having any supernatural revelations but for not consenting to them when he hath that is for being Carnal as well as Animal and that he is Carnal is wholly his own choice In the state of animality he cannot go to Heaven but neither will that alone bear him to Hell and therefore God does not let a man alone in that state for either God suggests to him what is spiritual or if he does not it is because himself hath superinduc'd something that is Carnal Having now explicated those Scriptures which have made some difficulty in this Question to what Topick soever we shall return all things are plain and clear in this Article Noxa caput sequitur The soul that sinneth it shall die Neque virtutes neque Epist 3. de morte Nepotian vitia parentum liberis imputantur saith S. Hierome Neither the vices nor the vertues of the parents are imputed to the children And therefore when Dion Chrysostomus had reprov'd Solon's laws which in some cases condemn the innocent posterity he adds this in honour of Gods law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That it does not like the law of the Athenians punish the children and kindred of the Criminal but every man is the cause of his own misfortune But concerning this it will not be amiss in order to many good purposes to observe the whole Oeconomy and dispensation of the Divine Justice in this affair §. 3. How God punishes the Fathers sin upon the Children 1. GOd may and does very often bless children to reward their fathers piety as is notorious in the famous descent of Abrahams family But the same is not the reason of favours and punishments For such is the nature of benefits that he in whose power they are may without injustice give them why and when and to whom he please 2. God never imputes the fathers sin to the son or relative formally making him guilty or being angry with the innocent eternally It were blasphemy to affirm so fierce and violent a cruelty of the most merciful Saviour and Father of mankinde and it was yet never imagined or affirm'd by any that I know of that God did yet ever damn an innocent son though the father were the vilest person and committed the greatest evils of the world actually personally choosingly and maliciously and why it should by so many and so confidently be affirm'd in a lesser instance in so unequal a case and at so long a distance I cannot suspect any reason Plutarch in his book against Herodotus affirms that it is not likely they would meaning that it was unjust to revenge an injury which the Samians did to the Corinthians three hundred years before But to revenge it for ever upon all generations and with an eternal anger upon some persons even the most innocent cannot without trembling be spoken or imagined of God who is the great lover of Souls Whatsoever the matter be in temporal inflictions of which in the next propositions I shall give account yet if the Question be concerning eternal damnation it was never said never threatned by God to pass from father to the son When God punishes one relative for the sin of another he does it as fines are taken in our law salvo contenemento the principal stake being safe it may be justice to seise upon all the smaller portions at least it is not against justice for God in such cases to use the power and dominion of a Lord. But this cannot be reasonable to be used in the matter of eternal interest because if God should as a Lord use his power over Innocents and condemn them to Hell he should be Author to them of more evil then ever he conveyed good to them which but to imagine would be a horrible impiety And therefore when our blessed Saviour
Lib. 7. c. 9. It is not late if it be true and to the thief upon the Cross Christ said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise And afterwards a short prayer easily pierceth heaven so it be darted forth with a vehement force of the spirit Truly the history of the Kings tels that David who was so great a sinner used but three syllables for he is read to have said no more but Peccavi I have sinned For S. Ambrose said The flame of the sacrifice of his heart ascends up to heaven Because we have a merciful and gentle Lord and the correction of our sins needs not much time but great fervor And to the same purpose are the words of Alcuinus the Tutor of Charls the Great It behooves us to come to repentance with all confidence and by faith to beleeve undoubtedly that by repentance our sins may be blotted out Etiamsi in ultimo vitae spiritu commissa poeniteat although we repent of our sins in the last breath of our life Now after all these grounds of hope and confidence to a sinner what can be pretended in defiance of a sinful life and since men will hope upon one ground though it be trifling and inconsiderable when there are so many doctrinal grounds of hopes established propositions parts of Religion and Articles of faith to rely upon for all these particulars before reckoned men are called upon to believe earnestly and are hated and threatned and despised if they do not believe them what is there left to discourage the evil lives of men or to lessen a full iniquity since upon the account of the premises either we may do what we list without sin or sin without punishment or go on without fear or repent without danger and without scruple be confident of Heaven And now if Moral Theology relie upon such notices as these I thought my work was at an end before I had well finished the first steps of my progression The whole summe of affairs was in danger and therefore I need not trouble my self or others with consideration of the particulars I therefore thought it necessary first to undermine these false foundations and since an inquiry into the minutes of conscience is commonly the work of persons that live holily I ought to take care that this be accounted necessary and all false warrants to the contrary be cancell'd that there might be many idonei auditores persons competent to hear and reade and such who ought to be promoted and assisted in their holy intendments And I bless God there are very many such and though iniquity does abound yet Gods grace is conspicuous and remarkable in the lives of very many to whom I shall design all the labours of my life as being dear to God and my dear Brethren in the service of Jesus But I would fain have the Churches as full as I could before I begin and therefore I esteem'd it necessary to publish these Papers before my other as containing the greatest lines of Conscience and the most general cases of our whole life even all the Doctrine of Repentance upon which all the hopes of man depend through Jesus Christ But I have other purposes also in the publication of this Book The Ministers of the Church of Rome who ever love to fish in troubled waters and to oppress the miserable and afflicted if they differ from them in a proposition use all the means they can to perswade our people that the man that is afflicted is not alive that the Church of England now it is a persecuted Church is no Church at all and though blessed be God our Propositions and Doctrines and Liturgy and Communion are sufficiently vindicated in despite of all their petty oppositions and trifling arrests yet they will never leave making noises and outcries which for my part I can easily neglect as finding them to be nothing but noise But yet I am willing to try the Rights and Excellencies of a Church with them upon other accounts by such indications as are the most proper tokens of life I mean propositions of Holiness the necessities of a holy life for certainly that Church is most to be followed who brings us nearest to God and they make our approaches nearest who teach us to be most holy and whose Doctrines command the most excellent and severest lives But if it shall appear that the prevailing Doctrines in the Church of Rome do consequently teach or directly warrant impiety or which is all one are too easie in promising pardon and for it have no defences but distinctions of their own inventing I suppose it will be a greater reproof to their confidence and bold pretensions then a discourse against one of their immaterial propositions that have neither certainty nor usefulness But I had rather that they would preach severity then be reprov'd for their careless propositions and therefore am well pleased that even amongst themselves some are so convinc'd of the weakness of their usual Ministeries of Repentance that as much as they dare they call upon the Priests to be more deliberate in their absolutions and severe in their impositions of satisfactions requiring a longer time of Repentance before the penitents be reconcil'd Mounsieur Arnauld of the Sorbon hath appeared publickly in reproof of a frequent and easie Communion without the just and long preparations of Repentance and its proper exercises and Ministerie Petavius the Jesuit hath oppos'd him the one cries The present Church the other The Ancient Church and as Petavius is too hard for his adversary in the present Authority so Mounsieur Arnauld hath the clearest advantage in the pretensions of Antiquity and the arguments of Truth from which Petavius and his abettor Bagot the Jesuit have no escape or defensative but by distinguishing Repentance into Solemn and Sacramental which is just as if they should say Repentance is twofold one such as was taught and practis'd by the Primitive Church the other that which is in use this day in the Church of Rome for there is not so much as one pregnant testimony in Antiquity for the first four hundred years that there was any Repentance thought of but Repentance toward God and sometimes perform'd in the Church in which after their stations were perform'd they were admitted to the holy Communion excepting onely in the danger or article of death in which they hastened the Communion and enjoyn'd the stations to the afterwards completed in case they did recover and if they did not they left the event to God But this question of theirs can never be ended upon the new principles nor shall be freely argued because of their interest For who ever are obliged to profess some false propositions shall never from thence finde out an intire truth but like caskes in a troubled sea sometimes they will be under water sometimes above For the productions of errour are infinite but most commonly monstrous and in the fairest of them there will be
some crooked or deformed part But of the thing it self I have given such accounts as I could being ingaged on no side and the servant of no interest and have endevour'd to represent the dangers of every sinner the difficulty of obtaining pardon the many parts and progressions of Repentance the severity of the Primitive Church their rigid Doctrines and austere Disciplines the degrees of easiness and complyings that came in by negligence and I desire that the effect should be that all the pious and religious Curates of Souls in the Church of England would endevour to produce so much fear and reverence caution and wariness in all their penitents that they should be willing to undergo more severe methods in their restitution then now they do that men should not dare to approach to the holy Sacrament as soon as ever their foul hands are wet with a drop of holy rain but that they should expect the periods of life and when they have given to their Curate fair testimony of a hearty Repentance and know it to be so within themselves they may with comfort to all parties communicate with holiness and joy For I conceive this to be that event of things which was design'd by S. Paul in that excellent advice Obey them that have the rule over you Heb. 13.17 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 submit your selves viz. to their ordering and discipline because they watch for your souls as they that must give accounts for them that they may do it with joy I am sure we cannot give accounts of souls of which we have no notice and though we had reason to rescue them from the yoke of bondage which the unjust laws and fetters of annual and private Confession as it was by them ordered did make men to complain of yet I believe we should be all unwilling our Charges should exchange these fetters for worse and by shaking off the laws of Confession accidentally entertain the tyranny of sin It was neither fit that all should be tied to it nor yet that all should throw it off There are some sins and some cases and some persons to whom an actual Ministery and personal provision and conduct by the Priests Office were better then food or physick It were therefore very well if great sinners could be invited to bear the yoke of holy discipline and do their Repentances under the conduct of those who must give an account of them that they would inquire into the state of their souls that they would submit them to be judged by those who are justly and rightly appointed over them or such whom they are permitted to choose and then that we would apply our selves to understand the secrets of Religion the measures of the Spirit the conduct of Souls the advantages and disadvantages of things and persons the wayes of life and death the labyrinths of temptation and all the remedies of sin the publick and private the great and little lines of Conscience and all those wayes by which men may be assisted and promoted in the wayes of godliness for such knowledge as it is most difficult and secret untaught and unregarded so it is most necessary and for want of it the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist is oftentimes given to them that are in the gall of bitterness that which is holy is given to Dogs Indeed neither we nor our Forefathers could help it alwayes and the Discipline of the Church could seise but upon few all were invited but none but the willing could receive the benefit but however it were pity that men upon the account of little and trifling objections should be discouraged from doing themselves benefit and from enabling us with greater advantages to do our duty to them It was of old observed of the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they obey the laws and by the excellency of their own lives excel the perfection of the laws and it is not well if we shall be earnest to tell them that such a thing is not necessary if we know it to be good For in this present dissolution of manners to tell the people concerning any good thing that it is not necessary is to tempt them to let it alone The Presbyterian Ministers who are of the Church of England just as the Irish are English have obtained such power with their Proselytes that they take some account of the Souls of such as they please before they admit them to their communion in Sacraments they doe it to secure them to their party or else make such accounts to be as their Shibboleth to discern their Jews from the men of Ephraim but it were very well we would doe that for Conscience for Charity and for Piety which others doe for Interest or Zeal and that we would be careful to use all those Ministeries and be earnest for all those Doctrines which visibly in the causes of things are apt to produce holiness and severe living It is no matter whether by these arts any Sect or Name be promoted it is certain Christian Religion would and that 's the reall interest of us all that those who are under our Charges should know the force of the Resurrection of Christ and the conduct of the Spirit and live according to the purity of God and the light of the Gospel To this let us cooperate with all wisdome and earnestness and knowledge and spiritual understanding And there is no better way in the world to doe this then by ministring to persons singly in the conduct of their Repentance which as it is the work of every man so there are but few persons who need not the conduct of a spiritual guide in the beginnings and progressions of it To the assistance of this work I have now put my Symbol having by the sad experience of my own miseries and the calamities of others to whose restitution I have been called to minister been taught something of the secret of Souls and I have reason to think that the words of our dearest Lord to S. Peter were also spoken to me Tu autem conversus confirma fratres I hope I have received many of the mercies of a repenting sinner and I have felt the turnings and varieties of spiritual entercourses and I have often observed the advantages in ministring to others and am most confident that the greatest benefits of our office may with best effect be communicated to souls in personal and particular Ministrations In the following book I have given advices and have asserted many truths in order to all this I have endevoured to break in pieces almost all those propositions upon the confidence of which men have been negligent of severe and strict living I have cancell'd some false grounds upon which many answers in Moral Theology us'd to be made to inquiries in Cases of Conscience I have according to my weak ability described all the necessities and great inducements of a holy life and have endevoured to do it so plainly that
which they can obey And indeed no man could be a sinner but he that breaks that law which he could have kept We were all sinners by the Covenant of Works but that was in those instances where it might have been otherwise For the Covenant of Works was not impossible because it consisted of impossible Commandements for every Commandement was kept by some or other and all at some times but therefore it was impossible to be kept because at some time or other men would be impotent or ignorant or surpris'd and for this no abatement was made in that Covenant But then since in what every man could help he is found to be a sinner he ought to account it a mighty grace that his other services are accepted In pursuance of this 15. Let no man boast himself in the most glorious services and performances of Religion Qui in Ecclesiâ semper gloriosè granditer operati sunt Epist ad lapsos opus suum Domino nunquam imputaverunt as S. Cyprian's expression is They who have greatly served God in the Church and have not been forward to exact and challenge their reward of God they are such whom God will most certainly reward For humility without other external works is more pleasing to God then pride though standing upon heaps of excellent actions It is the saying of S. Chrysostome * For if it be as natural to us to live according to the measures of reason as for beasts to live by their nature and instinct what thanks is due to us for that more then to them for this And therefore one said well Ne te jactes si benè servisti Obsequitur Sol obtemperat Lunae Boast not if thou hast well obeyed The Sun and the Moon do so and shall never be rewarded * But when our selves and all our faculties are from God he hath power to demand all our services without reward therefore if he will reward us it must wholly be a gift to us Concil Aâ—ausic 2. c. 18. Dâ—betur merocs bonis operibus sed gratia quae non debetur praecedit ut fiant that he will so crown our services * But he does not onely give us all our being and all our faculties but makes them also irriguous with the dew of his Divine Grace sending his holy Son to call us to repentance and to die to obtain for us pardon and resurrection and eternal life sending his holy Spirit by rare arguments and aids external and internal to help us in our spiritual contentions and difficulties So that we have nothing of our own and therefore can challenge nothing to our selves * But besides these considerations many sins are forgiven to us and the service of a whole life cannot make recompence for the infinite favour of receiving pardon * Especially since after our amendment and repentance there are remaining such weaknesses and footsteps of our old impieties that we who have daily need of the Divine Mercy and Pity cannot challenge a reward for that which in many degrees needs a pardon for if every act we do should not need some degrees of pardon yet our persons do in the periods of our imperfect workings * But after all this all that we can do is no advantage to God he is not profited or obliged by our services no moments do thence accrew to his felicities and to challenge a reward of God or to think out best services can merit heaven is as if Galileo when he had found out a Star which he had never observed before Job 35.7 and pleased himself in his own fancy should demand of the Grand Signior to make him King of Tunis for what is he the better that the studious man hath pleased himself in his own Art and the Turkish Empire gets no advantages by his new Argument * And this is so much the more material if we consider that the littleness of our services if other things were away could not countervail the least moment of Eternity Rom. 8.18 and the poor Countryman might as well have demanded of Cyrus to give him a Province for his handful of river water as we can expect of God to give us Heaven as a reward of our good works 16. But although this rule relying upon such great and convincing grounds can abolish all proud expectations of reward from God as a debtor for our good works yet they ought not to destroy our modest confidence and our rejoycings in God who by his gracious promises hath not onely obliged himself to help us if we pray to him but to reward us if we work For our God is merciful Psa 62.12 he rewardeth every man according to his work so said David according to the nature and graciousness of the work not according to their value and proper worthiness Mat. 5.12 1 Cor. 3.8 Matt. 16. 27. 2 Cor. 4.17 2 Thess 1.5 Apoc. 3.4 16.6 Rom. 8.18 not that they deserve it but because God for the communication of his goodness was pleased to promise it Promissum quidem ex misericordiâ sed ex justitiâ persolvendum said S. Bernard Mercy first made the promise but Justice payes the debt Which words were true if we did exactly do all that duty to which the reward was so graciously promised but where much is to be abated even of that little which was bound upon us by so glorious promises of reward there we can in no sense challenge Gods justice but so as it signifies equity In Matth. lib. 3. cap. 20. v. 8. and is mingled with the mercies of the chancery Gratis promisit gratis reddit So Ferus God promised freely and payes freely If therefore thou wilt obtain grace and favour make no mention of thy deservings And yet let not this slacken thy work but reinforce it and enlarge thy industry since thou hast so gracious a Lord who of his own meer goodness will so plentifully reward it 17. If we fail in the outward work let it be so ordered that it be as little imputable to us as we can that is let our default not be at all voluntary but wholly upon the accounts of a pityable infirmity For the Law was a Covenant of Works such as they were but the minde could not make amends within for the defect without But in the Gospel it is otherwise for here the will is accepted for the fact in all things where the fact is not in our power But where it is there to pretend a will is hypocrisie Nequam illud verbum est benè vult nisi qui benè facit said the Comedian This rule is our measure in the great lines of duty in all negative Precepts and in the periods of the law of Christ which cannot pass by us without being observed But in the material and external instances of duty we may without our fault be disabled and therefore can only be supplied with our endevours and desires But that is our advantage
iniquity and a sincere obedience in the faith of Jesus Christ which is the result of all the foregoing considerations and usages of words and is further manifested in the following appellatives and descriptions by which Repentance is signified and recommended to us in â—cripture 1. It is called Reconciliation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We pray you in Christs stead to be reconciled to God that is to be friends with him no longer to stand in terms of distance for every habitual sinner every one that provokes him to anger by his iniquity is his enemy not that every sinner hates God by a direct hate but as obedience is love so disobedience is enmity or hatred by interpretation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 enemies in their minde by wicked works Col. 1.21 So S. Paul expresses it and therefore the reconciling of these is to represent them holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight 23 Pardon of sins is the least part of this reconciliation Our sins and our sinfulness too must be taken away that is our old guilt and the remanent affections must be taken off before we are friends of God And therefore we finde this reconciliation press'd on our parts we are reconciled to God not God to us For although the term be relative and so signifies both parts as conjunction and friendship and society and union do yet it pleased the Spirit of God by this expression to signifie our duty expresly and to leave the other to be supposed because if our parts be done whatsoever is on Gods part can never fail And 2. Although this reconciliation begins on Gods part and he first invites us to peace and gave his Son a Sacrifice yet Gods love is very revocable till we are reconciled by obedience and conformity 2. It is called Renewing and that either with the connotation of the subject renewed or the cause renewing The renewing of the Holy Ghost Tit. 3.5 Rom. 18.2 Eph 4.23 and the renewing of the minde or the spirit of the minde The word is exactly the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a change of minde from worse to better as it is distinguished from the fruits and effects of it So be renewed in your minde that is throw away all your foolish principles and non-sense propositions by which you use to be tempted and perswaded to sin and inform your minde with wise notices and sentences of God That ye put off concerning the old conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitfull lusts and that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness which is an excellent description of Repentance In which it is observable that S. Paul uses two words more to express the greatness and nature of this change and conversion It is 3. A new Creature The new Man Created in Righteousness Eph. 2.10.3.9 John 3.6 for the state of Repentance is so great an alteration that in some sense it is greater then the Creation because the things created had in them no opposition to the power of God but a pure capacity obediential Jam. 1.18 but a sinner hath dispositions opposite to the Spirit of Grace and he must unlearn much before he can learn any thing He must die before he can be born Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit Continuò hoc mors est illius quod fuit anté Lucret. Our sins the body of sin the spirit of uncleanness the old man must be abolished mortified crucified buried Jude Rev. 7.14 Heb. 10.22 23. Psal 50.9 2 Cor. 7.1 1 Joh. 3.3 our sins must be laid away we must hate the garments spotted with the flesh and our garments must be whitened in the blood of the Lamb our hearts must be purged from an evil conscience purified as God is pure that is as S. Paul expresses it from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit denying or renouncing all ungodliness and worldly lusts And then as the antithesis or consequent of this is when we have laid away our sin and renounced ungodliness We must live godly righteously and soberly in this present world Gal. 2.20 we must not live either to the world or to our selves but to Christ Hic dies aliam vitam adfert alios mores postulat Our manner of life must be wholly differing from our former vanities so that the life which we now live in the flesh we must live by the faith of the Son of God that is according to his Laws and most holy Discipline This is pressed earnestly upon us by those many Precepts of obedience to God to Christ Rom. 6.17 Acts 6.7 1 Pet. 4.3 Eph. 2 3. Jam. 1.22.23 1 Joh. 3.22 Joh. 3.4 1 Joh. 1.6 2 Cor. 8.21 Col. 1.10 1 Cor. 15.58 to the holy Gospel to the Truth to the Doctrine of Faith * of doing good doing righteousness doing the truth * serving in the newness of the Spirit * giving our members up as servants of righteousness unto holiness * being holy in all conversations * following after peace with all men and holiness being followers of good works providing things honest in the sight of God and men abhorring evil and cleaving to that which is good * perfecting holiness in the fear of God to be perfect in every good work * being filled with the fruits of righteousness walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitfull in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God * abounding in the work of the Lord. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the words often used fill'd full and perfect To the same purpose is it that we are commanded to live in Christ and unto God that is 2 Tim. 3.12 to live according to their will and by their rule and to their glory and in their fear and love called by S. Paul to live in the faith of the Son of God Gal. 2.20 1 Cor. 2.1 1 Thess 16. Joh. 2.6 Eph. 2.10 to be followers of Christ and of God to dwell in Christ and to abide in him to walk according to the Commandements of God in good works in truth according to the Spirit to walk in light to walk with God which was said of Enoch of whom the Greek LXX reade 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He pleased God * There are very many more to the same purpose For with great caution and earnestness the holy Scriptures place the duties of mankinde in practice and holiness of living and removes it farre from a confidence of notion and speculation Qui fecerit docuerit He that doth them and teaches them Mat. 5 19. Luke 5.46 shall be great in the Kingdome and Why do you call me Lord Lord and do not the things I say to you Joh. 15.14 and Ye are my friends if ye do what I command you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ignat. ad Magnes We must not onely be
was called by them quasi pellicatus that inticing which is proper to uncleanness So Cicero in A. Gellius Lib. 13. c. 19. Nemo ita manifesto peccatu tenebatur ut cum impudens fuisset in facto tum impudentior videretur si negaret Thus the indistinction of words mingles all their significations in the same common notion and formality They were not sins at all if they were not against a Law and if they be they cannot be of their own nature venial but must be liable to that punishment which was threatned in the Law whereof that action is a transgression 2. The Law of God never threatens the justice of God never inflicts punishment but upon transgressors of his Laws the smallest offences are not only threatned but may be punished with death therefore they are transgressions of the Divine Law So S. Basil argues Nullum peccatum contemnendum ut parvum quando D. Paulus de omni peccato generatim pronunciaverat stimulum mortis esse peccatum The sting of death is sin that is death is the evil consequent of sin and comes in the tail of it of every sin and therefore no sin must be despised as if it were little Now if every little sin hath this sting also as it is on all hands agreed that it hath it follows that every little transgression is perfectly and intirely against a Commandement And indeed it is not sense to say any thing can in any sense be a sin and that it should not in the same sense be against a Commandement For although the particular instance be not named in the Law yet every instance of that matter must be meant It was an extreme folly in Bellarmine to affirm De amiss grat cap. 11. §. Assumptio probatur Peceatum veniale ex parvitate materiae est quidem perfectè voluntarium sed non perfectè contra legem Lex enim non prohibet furtum unius oboli in specie sed prohibet furtum in genere That a sin that is venial by the smalness of the matter is not perfectly against the Law because the Law forbids theft indeed in the general but does not in particular forbid the stealing of a half-peny for upon the same reason it is not perfectly against the Law to steal three pound nineteen shillings three pence because the Law in general onely forbids theft but does not in particular forbid the stealing of that sum * But what is besides the Law and not against it cannot be a sin and therefore to fancy any sin to be onely besides the Law is a contradiction so to walk to ride to eat flesh or herbs to wear a long or a short garment are said to be besides the Law but therefore they are permitted and indifferent Indifferent I say in respect of that Law which relates to that particular matter and indifferent in all senses unless there be some collateral Law which may prohibit it indirectly So for a Judge to be a Coachman for a Priest to be a Fidler or Inne-keeper are not directly unlawful but indirectly they are as being against decency and publick honesty or reputation or being inconvenient in order to that end whither their calling is design'd To this sense are those words of S. Paul All things are lawful for me but all things are not expedient That is some things which directly are lawful by an indirect obligation may become unfit to be done but otherwise Licitum est quod nullâ lege prohibetur saith the Law If no Law forbids it then it is lawful and to abstain from what is lawful though it may have a worthiness in it more then ordinary yet to use our liberty is at no hand a sin The issue then is this either we are forbidden to doe a venial sin or we are not If we are not forbidden then it is as lawful to doe a venial sin as to marry or eat flesh If we are forbidden then every such action is directly against Gods Law and consequently finable at the will of the supreme Judge and if he please punishable with a supreme anger Aâ—d to this purpose there is an excellent observation in S. Austin Lib. 3. Quaest super Levit. q. 20. Peccatum delictum si nihil differrent inter se si unius rei duo nomina essent non curaret Scriptura tam diligentèr unum esse utriusque sacrificium There are several names in Scripture to signify our wandrings and to represent the several degrees of sin but carefully it is provided for that they should be expiated with the same sacrifice which proves that certainly they are prevarications of the same Law offences of the same God provocations of the same anger and heiâ—s of the same death and even for small offences a Sacrifice was appointed lest men should neglect what they think God regarded not 3. Every sin even the smallest is against Charity which is the end of the Commandement For every sin or evil of transgression is far worse then all the evils of punishment with which mankinde is afflicted in this world and it is a less evil that all mankinde should be destroyed then that God should be displeased in the least instance that is imaginable Now if we esteem the loss of our life or our estate the wounding our head or the extinction of an eye to be great evils to us and him that does any thing of this to us to be our enemy or to be injurious we are to remember that God hates every sin worse then we can hate pain or beggery And if a nice and a tender conscience the spirit of every excellent person does extremely hate all that can provoke God to anger or to jealousy it must be certain that God hates every such thing with an hatred infinitely greater so great that no understanding can perceive the vastness of it and immensity For by how much every one is better by so much the more he hates every sin and the soul of a righteous man is vexed and afflicted with the inrodes of his unavoidable calamities the armies of Egypt the lice and flies his insinuating creeping infirmities Now if it be holiness in him to hate these little sins it is an imitation of God for what is in us by derivation is in God essentially therefore that which angers a good man and ought so to do displeases God and consequently is against charity or the love of God For it is but a vain dream to imagine that because just men such who are in the state of grace and of the love of God do commit smaller offences therefore they are not against the love of God for every degree of cold does abate something of the heat in any hot body but yet because it cannot destroy it all cold and heat may be consistent in the same subject but no man can therefore say they are not contraries and would not destroy each other if they were not hindred by something else
in my Ministery saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what then he is not hereby justified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because some sins might adhere to him he not knowing that they were sins Ab occult is meis munda me Domine was an excellent Prayer of David Cleanse me O Lord from my secret faults Hoc dicit nequid fortè per ignorantiam deliquisset saith S Hierome he prayed so lest peradventure he should have sinned ignorantly But of this I shall give a further account in describing the measures of sins of infirmity For the present although this resolution against all is ineffective as to a perfect immunity from small offences yet it is accepted as really done because it is done as it can possibly 5. Let no man relie upon the Catalogues which are sometimes given and think that such things which the Doctors have call'd Venial sins may with more facility be admitted and with smaller portions of care be regarded or with a slighter repentance washed off For besides that some have called perjuries anger envy injurious words by lighter names and titles of a little reproof and having lived in wicked times were betray'd into easier sentences of those sins which they saw all mankind almost to practise which was the case of some of the Doctors who lived in the time of those Wars which broke the Roman Empire besides this I say venial sins can rather be * See chap. 7. of sins of infirmity described then enumerated For none are so in their nature but all that are so are so by accident and according as sins tend to excuse so they put on their degrees of veniality No sin is absolutely venial but in comparison with others Neither is any sin at all times and to all persons alike venial And therefore let no man venture upon it upon any mistaken confidence They that think sins are venial in their own nature cannot agree which are venial and which are not and therefore nothing is in this case so certain as that all that doctrine which does in any sense represent sins as harmless or tame Serpents is infinitely dangerous and there is no safety but by striving against all beforehand and repenting of all as there is need I summe up this question and these advices with the saying of Josephus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is as damnable to indulge leave to our selves to sin little sins as great ones A man may be choaked with a raisin as well as with great morsels of flesh and a small leak in a ship if it be neglected will as certainly sink her as if she sprung a plank Death is the wages of all and damnation is the portion of the impenitent whatever was the instance of their sin Though there are degrees of punishment yet there is no difference of state as to this particular and therefore we are tied to repent of all and to dash the little Babylonians against the stones against the Rock that was smitten for us For by the blood of Jesus and the tears of Repentance and the watchfulness of a diligent careful person many of them shall be prevented and all shall be pardoned A Psalm to be frequently used in our Repentance for our daily sins BOw down thine ear O Lord hear me for I am poor and needy Rejoyce the soul of thy servant for unto thee O Lord do I lift up my soul For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee Teach me thy way O Lord I will walk in thy truth unite my heart to fear thy Name Shall mortal man be more just then God shall a man be more pure then his Maker Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly How much less on them that dwell in houses of clay whose foundation is in the dust which are crushed before the moth Doth not their excellency which is in them go away They die even without wisdome The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple Moreover by them is thy servant warned and in keeping of them there is great reward Who can understand his errours Cleanse thou me from my secret faults keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins let them not have dominion over me then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression O ye sons of men how long will ye turn my glory into shame how long will ye love vanity and seek after leasing But know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself The Lord will hear when I call unto him Out of the deep have I called unto thee O Lord Lord hear my voice O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint If thou Lord wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss O Lord who may abide it But there is mercy with thee therefore shalt thou be feared Set a watch O Lord before my mouth and keep the door of my lips Take from me the way of lying and cause thou me to make much of thy law The Lord is full of compassion and mercy long-suffering and of great goodness He will not alway be chiding neither keepeth he his anger for ever Yea like as a Father pitieth his own children even so is the Lord mercifull unto them that fear him For he knoweth whereof we are made he remembreth that we are but dust Praise the Lord O my soul and forget not all his benefits which forgiveth all thy sin and healeth all thine infirmities Glory be to the Father c. The PRAYER O Eternal God whose perfections are infinite whose mercies are glorious whose justice is severe whose eyes are pure whose judgements are wise be pleased to look upon the infirmities of thy servant and consider my weakness My spirit is willing but my flesh is weak I desire to please thee but in my endevours I fail so often so foolishly so unreasonably that I extremely displease my self and I have too great reason to fear that thou also art displeased with thy servant O my God I know my duty I resolve to doe it I know my dangers I stand upon my guard against them but when they come near I begin to be pleased and delighted in the little images of death and am seised upon by folly even when with greatest severity I decree against it Blessed Jesus pity me and have mercy upon my infirmities II. O Dear God I humbly beg to be relieved by a mighty grace for I bear a body of sin and death about me sin creeps upon me in every thing that I doe or suffer When I doe well I am apt to be proud when I doe amiss I am sometimes too confident sometimes affrighted If I see others doe amiss I either neglect them or grow too angry and in the very mortification of my anger I
grow angry and peevish My duties are imperfect my repentances little my passions great my fancy trifting The sins of my tongue are infinite and my omissions are infinite and my evil thoughts cannot be numbred and I cannot give an account concerning innumerable portions of my time which were once in my power but were let slip and were partly spent in sin partly thrown away upon trifles and vanity and even of the basest sins of which in accounts of men I am most innocent I am guilty before thee entertaining those sins in little instances thoughts desires and imaginations which I durst not produce into action and open significations Blessed Jesus pity me and have mercy upon my infirmities III. TEach me O Lord to walk before thee in righteousness perfecting holiness in the fear of God Give me an obedient will a loving spirit a humble understanding watchfulness over my thoughts deliberation in all my words and actions well tempered passions and a great prudence and a great zeal and a great charity that I may doe my duty wisely diligently holily O let me be humbled in my infirmities but let me be also safe from my enemies let me never fall by their violence nor by my own weakness let me never be overcome by them nor yet give my self up to folly and weak principles to idleness and secure careless walking but give me the strengths of thy Spirit that I may grow strong upon the ruines of the flesh growing from grace to grace till I become a perfect man in Christ Jesus O let thy strength be seen in my weakness and let thy mercy triumph over my infirmities pitying the condition of my nature the infancy of grace the imperfection of my knowledge the transportations of my passion Let me never consent to sin but for ever strive against it and every day prevail till it be quite dead in me that thy servant living the life of grace may at last be admitted to that state of glory where all my infirmities shall be done away and all teares be dried up and sin and death shall be no more Grant this O most gracious God and Father for Jesus Christ his sake Amen OUr Father which art in heaven Hallowed be thy Name Thy Kingdome come Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil Amen CHAP. IV. Of Actual single sins and what Repentance is proper to them §. 1. THE first part of Conversion or Repentance is a quitting of all sinful habits and abstaining from all criminal actions whatsoever Virtus est vitium fugere sapientia prima Stultitia caruisse For unless the Spirit of God rule in our hearts we are none of Christs but he rules not where the works of the flesh are frequently or maliciously or voluntarily entertained All the works of the flesh and whatsoever leads to them all that is contrary to the Spirit and does either grieve or extinguish him must be rescinded and utterly taken away Concerning which it is necessary that I set down the * Mat. 15.19 Mar. 7.21 Galat. 5.16 19 20 21. Eph 4.31 c. 5.3 4 5. 2 Tim. 3.2 3 4 5. Rom. 1.29 30 31 32. 1 Cor. 6.9 Revel 21.8 1 Pet. 4.3 15. Catalogues which by Christ and his Apostles are left us as lights and watch-towers to point out the rocks and quick-sands where our danger is and this I shall the rather doe not onely because they comprehend many evils which are not observed or feared some which are commended and many that are excused but also because although they are all mark'd with the same black character of death yet there is some difference in the execution of the sentence and in the degrees of their condemnation and of the consequent Repentance 2. Evil thoughts or discoursings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Evil reasonings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Hesychius that is prating importune pratling and loosness of tongue such as is usual with bold boyes and young men prating much and to no purpose But our Bibles reade it Evil thoughts or surmisings for in Scripture it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so Suidas observes concerning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to think long and carefully to dwell in meditation upon a thing to which when our blessed Saviour addes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 evil he notes and reproves such kinde of morose thinkings and fancying of evil things and it is not unlikely that he means thoughts of uncleanness or lustful fancies For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Suidas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Hesychius it signifies such words as are prologues to wantonness so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Aristophanes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lysistratâ So that here are forbidden all wanton words and all morose delighting in venereous thoughts all rollings and tossing such things in our minds For even these defile the soul Verborum obscoenitas si turpitudini rerum adhibeatur ludus ne libero quidem homine dignus est said Cicero Obscene words are a mockery not worthy of an ingenuous person This is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 5.4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that foolish talking and jesting which S. Paul joyns to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that filthiness of communication which men make a jest of but is indeed the basest in the world the sign of a vile dishonest minde and it particularly noted the talk of Mimicks and Parasites Buffoons and Players whose trade was to make sport 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and they did use to doe it with nastiness and filthy talkings as is to be seen in Aristophanes and is rarely described and severely reproved in S. Chrysostome in his 6. Homily upon S. Matthew For per verba dediscitur rerum pudor which S. Paul also affirms in the words of Menander 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Evil words corrupt good manners and evil thoughts being the fountain of evil words lie under the same prohibition Under this head is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a talkative rash person ready to speak slow to hear against S. James his rule 3. Inventers of evil things Contrivers of all such artifices as minister to vice Curious inventions for cruelty for gluttony for lust witty methods of drinking wanton pictures and the like which for the likeness of the matter I have subjoyn'd next to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the evil thinkings or surmisings reproved by our blessed Saviour as these are expresly by S. Paul 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Covetousness or Inordinate unreasonable desires For the word does not onely signify the designing and contrivances of unjust ways of purchasing which is not often separated from covetous desires but the very studium habendi the
this be expounded to be a permission to commit single acts Gal. 5.21 S. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians affixes the same penalty to the actions as to the habits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gal. 5.21 they that doe such things that is the actions of those sins are damnable and exclusive from heaven as verily as the habits And however in moral accounts or in Aristotles Ethicks a man is not called by the name of a single action yet in all laws both of God and man he is He that steals once is a thief in the Courts of God and the King and one act of adultery makes a man an adulterer so that by this measure they that are such and they that doe such things means the same and the effect of both is exclusion from the Kingdome of heaven 4. Single actions in Scripture are called works of darkness deeds of the body works of the flesh Ephes 8. Rom. 8.13 and though they do not reign yet if they enter they disturb the rest and possession of the spirit of grace and therefore are in their several measures against the holiness of the Gospel of Christ All sins are single in their acting and a sinful habit differs from a sinful act but as many differ from one or as a year from an hour a vicious habit is but one sin continued or repeated for as a sin grows from little to great so it passes from act to habit a sin is greater because it is complicated externally or internally no other way in the world it is made up of more kinds or more degrees of choice and when two or three crimes are mixt in one action then the sin is loud and clamorous and if these still grow more numerous and not interrupted and disjoyned by a speedy repentance then it becomes a habit As the continuation of an instant or its perpetual fluxe makes time and proper succession so does the reacting or the continuing in any one or more sins make a habitual sinner So that in this Question the answer for one will serve for the other where ever the habit is forbidden there also the act is criminal and against God damnable by the laws of God and actually damning without repentance Between sins great and little actual and habitual there is no difference of nature or formality but onely of degrees 5. And therefore the words that represent the state of sin are used indifferently both for acts and habits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to doe single acts and by aggravation onely can signify an habitual sinner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that commits sin is of the Devil so S. 1 Joh. 3.8 John by which although he means especially him that commits sin frequently or habitually for where there is greater reason there is the stronger affirmative yet that he must also mean it of single sins is evident not onely by the nature of the thing some single acts in some instances being as mischievous and malicious as a habit in others but by the words of our blessed Saviour that the Devil is the Father of lies and therefore every one that tels a lie is of the Devil eátenus To which adde also the words of S. John explicating his whole design in these and all his other words These things I write unto you that ye might not sin that is that ye might not doe sinful actions for it cannot be supposed that he did not as verily intend to prevent every sin as any sin or that he would onely have men to beware of habitual sins and not of actual single sins without which caution he could never have prevented the habitual To doe sin is to do one or to do many and are both forbidden under the same danger The same manner of expression in a differing matter hath a different signification To doe sin is to doe any one act of it but to doe righteousness is to doe it habitually He that doeth sin that is one act of sin is of the Devil But he that doth righteousness viz. habitually he onely is righteous The reason of the difference is this because one sin can destroy a man but one act of vertue cannot make him alive As a phial is broken though but a piece of its lip be cut away but it is not whole unless it be intire and unbroken in every part Dionys de Divin Nomin Bonum ex integrâ causâ malum ex qualibet particulari And therefore since he that does righteousness in S. Johns phrase is righteous and yet no man is righteous for doing one act of righteousness it follows that by doing righteousness he must mean doing it habitually But because one blow can kill a man or wound him desperately therefore when S. John speaks of doing sin he means doing any sin any way or in any degree of act or habit For this is that we are commanded by the Spirit of Christ we must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 walk exactly not having spot or wrinkle Eph. 5.15.27 or any thing of that nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 holy and unblameable so must the Church be that is so must be all the faithful or the men and women of the Christian Church for the Church is nothing but a congregation or collective body of believing persons Christ therefore intending to represent the Church to God without spot or wrinkle or fault Caesar Arelat hom 16. intends that all his servants should be so For let no man deceive himself Omnis homo qui post baptismum mortalia crimina commiserit hoc est homicidium adulterium furtum falsum testimonium vel reliqua crimina perpetravit unde per legem mundanam mori poterat si poenitentiam non egerit eleemosynam justam non fecerit nunquam habebit vitam aeternam sed cum Diabolo descendet ad inferna Every man who after his baptism hath committed mortal or killing sins that is to say murder adultery theft false witness or any other crimes which are capital by humane laws if he does not repent if he does not give just measures of alms he shall not have eternal life but with the Devil he shall descend into hell This is the sad sentence against all single acts of sin in the capital or greater instances But upon this account who can be justified who can hope for heaven since even the most righteous man that is sinneth and by single acts of unworthiness interrupts his course of piety and pollutes his spirit If a single act of these great or mortal sins can stand with the state of grace then not acts of these but habits are forbidden and these onely shut a man from heaven But if one single act destroys the state of grace and puts a man out of Gods favour then no man abides in it long and what shall be at the end of these things To this I answer that single acts are continually forbidden and in every period of their
sin is uncancell'd Of this nature is theft which cannot be cut off by a moral revocation or an internal act there must be something done without For it is a contradiction to say that a man is sorry for his act of stealing who yet rejoyces in the purchace and retains it Every man that repents is bound to make his sinful act as much as he can to be undone and the moral revocation or nolition of it is our entercourse with God onely who takes and accepts that which is the All which can be done to him But God takes care of our brother also and therefore will not accept his own share unless all interested persons be satisfied as much as they ought There is a great matter in it that our neighbour also do forgive us that his interest be served that he do not desire our punishment of this I shall afterwards give accounts in the mean time if the matter of our sin be not taken away so long as it remains so long there is a remanency and a tarrying in it and that is a degree of habit 9. Secondly if the single act have a continual fluxe or emanation from it self it is as a habit by moral account and is a principle of action and is potentially many Of this nature is every action whose proper and immediate principle is a passion Such as hatred of our neighbour a fearfulness of persecution a love of pleasures For a man cannot properly be said to have an act of hatred an actual expression of it he may but if he hates him in one act and repents not of it it is a vicious affection and in the sense of moral Theology it is a habit the law of God having given measures to our affections as well as to actions In this case when we have committed one act of uncharitableness or hatred it is not enough to oppose against it one act of love but the principle must be altered and the love of our neighbour must be introduced into our spirit 10. There is yet another sort of sinful action which does in some sense equal a habit and that is an act of the greatest and most crying sins a complicated sin Thus for a Prince or a Priest to commit adultery for a childe to accuse his Father falsly to oppress a widow in judgement are sins of a monstrous proportion they are three or four sins apeece and therefore are to be repented of by untwining the knot and cutting asunder every thred He that repents of adultery must repent of his uncleanness and of his injustice or wrong to his neighbour and of his own breach of faith and of his tempting a poor soul to sin and death and he must make amends for the scandal besides in case there was any in it In these and all the like cases let no man flatter himself when he hath wept and prayed against his sin one solemnity is not sufficient one act of contrition is but the beginning of a repentance and where the crime is capital by the laws of wise Nations the greatest the longest the sharpest repentance is little enough in the Court of conscience Paraenes ad poenitentiam So Pacianus Haec est novi Testamenti tota conclusio despectus in multis Spiritus sanctus haec nobis capitalis periculi conditione legavit Reliqua peccata meliorum operum compensatione curantur Haec verò tria crimina ut basilisci alicujus afflatus ut veneni calix ut lethalis arundo metuenda sunt non enim vitiare animam sed intercipere noverunt Some sins doe pollute and some doe kill the soul that is are very near approaches to death next to the unpardonable state * See Chapt. 5. and they are to be repented of just as habits are even by a long and a laborious repentance and by the piety and holiness of our whole ensuing life De peccato remisso noli esse securus said the son of Sirach Be not secure though your sin be pardoned when therefore you are working out and suing your pardon be not too confident 11. Those acts of sin which can once be done and no more as Parricide and such which destroy the subject or person against whom the sin is committed are to be cured by Prayer and Sorrow and entercourses with God immediately the effect of which because it can never be told and because the mischief can never be rescinded so much as by fiction of Law nor any supply be made to the injur'd person the guilty man must never think himself safe but in the daily and nightly actions of a holy Repentance 12. He that will repent well and truly of his single actual sins must be infinitely careful that he do not sin after his Repentance and think he may venture upon another single sin supposing that an act of contrition will take it off and so interchange his dayes by sin and sorrow doing to morrow what he was ashamed of yesterday For he that sins upon the confidence of Repentance does not repent at all because he repents that he may sin and these single acts so periodically returning do unite and become a habit He that resolves against a sin and yet falls when he is tempted is under the power of sin in some proportion and his estate is very suspicious though he alwayes resolved against that sin which he alwayes commits It is upon no other account that a single sin does not destroy a man but because it self is speedily destroyed if therefore it goes on upon its own strength and returns in its proper period it is not destroyed but lives and indangers the man 13. Be careful that you do not commit a single act of sin toward the latter end of your life for it being uncertain what degrees of anger God will put on and in what periods of time he will return to mercy the nearer to our death such sins intervene the more degrees of danger they have For although the former discourse is agreeable to the analogy of the Gospel and the Oeconomy of the Divine Mercy yet there are sad words spoken against every single sin Jam. 2.10 Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offends in one instance he shall be guilty of all saith S. James plainly affirming that the admitting one sin much more the abiding in any one sin destroys all our present possession of Gods favour Concerning which although it may seem strange that one prevarication in one instance should make an universal guilt yet it will be certain and intelligible if we consider that it relates not to the formality but to the event of things He that commits an act of Murther is not therefore an Adulterer but yet for being a Murtherer he shall die He is as if he were guilty of all that is his innocence in the other shall not procure him impunity in this One crime is inconsistent with Gods love and favour But there is something more in
put off our Repentance one day differs onely accidentally and by chance from the worst of evils from final impenitence it is the beginning of it it differs from it as an infant from a man it is materially the same sin and may also have the same formality 8. The putting off our Repentance from day to day must needs be a sin distinct from the guilt of the action whereof we are to repent because the principle of it cannot be innocent it must needs be distinctly Criminal It is a rebellion against God or hardness of heart or the spirit of Apostasie Presumption or Despair or at least such a carelesness as being in the question of our souls and in relation to God is infinitely farre from being excusable or innocent These Considerations seem to me of very great moment and to conclude the main proposition and at least they ought to effect this perswasion upon us that whoever hath committed a sin cannot honestly nor prudently nor safely defer his Repentance one hour He that repents instantly breaks his habit when it is in ovo in the shell and prevents Gods anger and his own debauchment and disimprovement Qui parvis obvius ibit Nazian Is nunquam praeceps scelera in graviora feretur And let us consider that if we defer our Repentance one hour we do to our souls worse then to our bodies Quae laedunt oculos festinas demere Horat. lib. 1. ep si quid Est animum differs curandi tempus in annum If dirt fall into our eyes we do not say to the Chirurgion Stay Sir and let the grit or little stone abide there till next week but get it out presently This similitude if it proves nothing yet will serve to upbraid our folly to instruct and exhort us in the duty of this Question Remember this that as in Gods account 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to remit and to retain a sin are opposite so it ought to be in ours Our retaining and keeping of a sin though but for a day is contrary to the designs of mercy and holiness it is against God and against the interest of our souls § 3. A sinful habit hath in it proper evils and a proper guiltiness of its own besides all that which came directly by the single actions BY a sinful habit I mean the facility and easiness the delight and custome of sinning contracted by the repetition of the acts of the same sin as a habit of drunkenness a habit of swearing and the like that is a quality inherent in the soul whereby we work with pleasure Eâ—hic Nicom l. 2. c. 2. for that Aristotle calls the infallible and proper indication of habits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And so long as any man sins willingly readily frequently and upon every temptation or most commonly so long he is an habitual sinner when he does his actions of Religion with pain and of his sin with pleasure he is in the state of death and enmity against God And as by frequent playing upon an instrument a man gets a habit of playing so he does in renewing the actions of the same sin there is an evil quality produced which affects and corrupts his soul * But concerning the nature of a vicious habit this also is to be added That a vicious habit is not onely contracted by the repetition of acts in the same kinde but by frequency of sinning in any variety of instances whatsoever For there are many vicious persons who have an ambulatory impiety and sin in all or most of their opportunities but their occasions are not uniform and therefore their irregularities are irregular and by chance for the instance but regular and certain in the prevarication Vetuleius Pavo would be sure to be drunk at the feasts of Saturn and take a surfet in the Calends of January he would be wanton at the Floralia and bloudy in the Theatres he would be prodigal upon his birth day and on the day of his marriage sacrifice Hecatombs to his Pertunda Dea and he would be sure to observe all the solemnities and festivals of vice in their own particulars and instances and thought himself a good man enough because he could not be called a drunkard or a glutton for one act and by sinning singly escap'd the appellatives of scorn which are usually fix'd upon vain persons that are married to one sin * Naturally to contract the habit of any one sin is like the entertaining of a Concubine and dwelling upon the folly of one miserable woman But a wandring habit is like a Libido vaga the vile adulteries of looser persons that drink at every cistern that runs over and stands open for them For such persons have a supreme habit a habit of disobedience and may for want of opportunity or abilities for want of pleasure or by the influence of an impertinent humour be kept from acting always in one scene But so long as they choose all that pleases them and exterminate no vice but entertain the instances of many their malice is habitual their state is a perfect aversation from God For this is that which the Apostle cals The body of sin Rom. 7. a compagination of many parts and members just as among the Lawyers a flock a people a legion are called bodies and corpus civitatis we finde in Livy corpus collegiorum in Caius corpus regni in Virgil and so here this union of several sins is the body of sin and that is the body of death And not onely he that feeds perpetually upon raw fruit puts himself into an ill habit of body but he also does the same thing who to day drinks too much and to morrow fils himself with cold fruits and the next day with condited mushromes and by evil orders and carelesness of diet and accidental miscarriages heaps up a multitude of causes and unites them in the production and causality of his death This general disorder is indeed longer doing but it kils as fatally and infallibly as a violent surfeit And if a man dwels in the kingdome of sin it is all one whether he be sick in one or in twenty places they are all but several rooms of the same Infirmatory and ingredients of the same deadly poison He that repeats his sin whether it be in one or in several instances strikes himself often to the heart with the same or with several daggers Having thus premised what was necessary for the explication of the nature of vicious habits we must consider that of vicious habits there is a threefold capacity 1. A natural 2. A moral 3. A relative as it denominates a man in relation to God 1. Of the Natural capacity of sinful habits The natural capacity of sinful habits is a facility or readiness of the faculty to doe the like actions and this is naturally consequent to the frequent repetition of sinful acts not voluntary but in its cause and therefore not criminal
S. Austin represents himself as a sad instance of this particular I was afraid lest God should hear me when I prayed against my lust As I fear'd death Lib. 8. Confess c. 7. c. 5. so dreadful it was to me to change my custome Velle meum tenebat inimicus inde mihi catenam fecerat constrinxerat me Quippe ex voluntate perversâ facta est libido dum servitur libidini facta est consuetudo dum consuetudini non resistitur facta est necessitas The Devil had made a chain for him and bound his will in fetters of darkness His perverse will made his lust grow high and while he serv'd his lust he superinduc'd a custome upon himself and that in time brought upon him a necessity For as an old disease hath not onely afflicted the part of its proper residence and by its abode made continual diminution of his strength but made a path also and a channel for the humours to run thither which by continual defluxion have digg'd an open passage and prevail'd beyond all the natural powers of resistance So is an habitual vice it hath debauch'd the understanding and made it to believe foolish things it hath abus'd the will and made it like a diseased appetite in love with filthy things it is like an evil stomach that makes a man eat unwholsome meat against his Reason 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That 's a sad calamity when a man sees what is good and yet cannot follow it nay that he should desire it and yet cannot lay hold upon it for his faculties are bound in fetters the habit hath taken away all those strengths of Reason and Religion by which it was hindred and all the objections by which it was disturbed and all that tenderness by which it was uneasie and now the sin is chosen and believ'd and lov'd it is pleasant and easie usual and necessary and by these steps of progression enters within the iron gates of death seal'd up by fate and a sad decree And therefore Simplicius upon Epictetus speaking of Medea seeing and approving good things by her understanding but yet without power to do them sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is to no purpose for us to think and to desire well unless we adde also deeds consonant to those right opinions and fair inclinations But that 's the misery of an evil habit in such as have them all may be well till you come to action Their principles good their discoursings right their resolutions holy their purposes strong their great interest understood their danger weighed and the sin hated and declaimed against for they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they have begun well and are instructed but because of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their intemperance and softness of spirit produc'd by vile customes there is as Plutarch observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fatal bestiality in the men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plutarch they sin and can neither will nor choose They are driven to death and they see themselves crown'd with garlands for the Sacrifice and yet go to their ruine merry as the Minstrels and the temptations that entertain and attend those horrid rites Trinummus Scibam ut esse me deceret facere non quibam miser said he in the Comedy I knew it well enough how I should comport my self but I was so wretched that I could not do it Now all this being the effect of a vicious habit and not of sinful actions it being the product and sad consequent of a quality introduc'd first by actions so much evil cannot be caused and produc'd immediately by that which is innocent As the fruit is such is the tree But let us try further 3. A vicious habit makes our recovery infinitely difficult our vertues troublesome our restitution uncertain In the beginnings of his return it is most visible For even after we are entring into pardon and the favour of God we are forc'd to fight for life we cannot delight in Gods service or feel Christs yoke so easie as of it self it is For a vicious habit is a new Concupiscence and superinduces such contradictions to the supernatural contentions and designs of grace it calls back nature from its remedy and purifications of Baptism and makes such new aptnesses that the punishment remains even after the beginning of the sins pardon and that which is a natural punishment of the sinful actions is or may be morally a sin as the lust which is produc'd by gluttony And when a man hath entertain'd a holy sorrow for his sins and made holy vows of obedience and a new life he must be forc'd to contend for every act of duty and he is daily tempted and the temptation is strong and his progression is slow he marches upon sharp-pointed stones where he was not us'd to go and where he hath no pleasure He is forc'd to do his duty as he takes Physick where reason and the grace of God make him consent against his inclination and to be willing against his will He is brought to that state of sorrow that either he shall perish for ever or he must do more for heaven then is needful to be done by a good man whose body is chaste and his spirit serene whose will is obedient and his understanding well inform'd whose temptations are ineffective and his strengths great who loves God and is reconcil'd to duty who delights in Religion and is at rest when he is doing God service But an habitual sinner even when he begins to return and in some measure loves God hath yet too great fondnesses for his enemy his repentances are imperfect his hatred and his love mixt nothing is pure nothing is whole nothing is easie So that the bands of holiness are like a yoke shaken upon the neck they fret the labouring Ox and make his work turn to a disease and as Isaac he marches up the hill with the wood upon his shoulders and yet for ought he knows himself may become the Sacrifice S. Austin complains that it was his own case He was so accustomed to the apertures and free emissions of his lust so pleas'd with the entertainments so frequent in the imployment so satisfied in his minde so hardned in his spirit so ready in his choice so peremptory in his foul determinations that when he began to consider that death stood at the end of that life he was amaz'd to see himself as he thought without remedy and was not to be recover'd but by a long time and a mighty grace the perpetual the daily the nightly prayers and violent importunities of his Mother the admirable Precepts and wise deportments of S. Ambrose the efficacy of truth the horrible fears of damnation hourly beating upon his spirit with the wings of horrour and affrightment and after all with a mighty uneasiness and a discomposed spirit he was by the good hand of God dragg'd from his fatal ruine
the righteousness of the Gospel that is faith and holiness which are the significations and the vital parts of the new creature 10. But because this doctrine is highly necessary and the very soul of Christianity I consider further that without the superinducing a contrary state of good to the former state of evil we cannot return or go off from that evil condition that God hates I mean the middle state or the state of lukewarmness For though all the old philosophy consented that vertue and vice had no medium between them but whatsoever was not evil was good and he that did not doe evil was a good man said the old Jews yet this they therefore did unreprovably teach because they knew not this secret of the righteousness of God For in the Evangelical justice between the natural or legal good or evil there is a medium or a third which of it self and by the accounts of the Law was not evil but in the accounts of the Evangelical righteousness is a very great one that is lukewarmness or a cold tame indifferent unactive religion Not that lukewarmness is by name forbidden by any of the laws of the Gospel but that it is against the analogy and design of it A lukewarm person does not do evil but he is hated by God because he does not vigorously proceed in godliness No law condemnes him but the Gospel approves him not because he does not from the heart obey this form of doctrine which commands a course a habit a state and life of holiness It is not enough that we abstain from evil we shall not be crowned unless we be partakers of a Divine nature 2 Pet. 1.4 For to this S. Peter enjoyns us carefully Now then we partake of a Divine nature when the Spirit dwels in us and rules all our faculties when we are united unto God when we imitate the Lord Jesus when we are perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect Now whether this can be done by an act of contrition needs no further inquiry but to observe the nature of Evangelical Righteousness the hatred God bears to lukewarmness the perfection he requires of a Christian the design and great example of our blessed Lord the glories of that inheritance whither we are design'd and of the obtaining of which obedience to God in the faith of Jesus Christ is made the onely indispensable necessary condition For let it be considered Suppose a man that is righteous according to the letter of the Law of the Ten Commandements all of which two excepted were Negative this man hath liv'd innocently and harmlesly all his days but yet uselesly unprofitably in rest and unactive circumstances is not this person an unprofitable servant The servant in the Parable was just such he spent not his Masters talent with riotous living like the Prodigal but laid it up in a Napkin he did neither good nor harm but because he did no good he receiv'd none but was thrown into outer darkness Nec furtum feci nec fugi si mihi dicat Servus habes pretium loris non ureris ajo Horat. Non hominem occidi non pasces in â—ruce corvos An innocent servant amongst the Romans might scape the Furca or the Mill or the Wheel but unless he was useful he was not much made of So it is in Christianity For that which according to Moses was called righteousness according to Christ is poverty and nakedness misery and blindness as appears in the reproof which the Spirit of God sent to the Bishop and Church of Laodicea Rev. 3.15 He thought himself rich when he was nothing that is he was harmless but not profitable innocent according to the measures of the law but not rich in good works So the Pharisees also thought themselves just by the justice of the law that is by their abstinence from condemned evils and therefore they refus'd to buy of Christ the Lord gold purified in the fire whereby they might become rich that is they would not accept of the righteousness of God the justice Evangelical and therefore they were rejected And thus to this very day do we Even many that have the fairest reputation for good persons and honest men reckon their hopes upon their innocence and legal freedoms and outward compliances that they are no liars nor swearers no drunkards nor gluttons no extortioners or injurious no thieves nor murtherers but in the mean time they are unprofitable servants not instructed not throughly prepared to every good work not abounding in the work of the Lord but blinde and poor and naked just but as the Pharisees innocent but as Heathens In the mean time they are only in that state to which Christ never made the promises of eternal life and joys hereafter Now if this be true in one period it is true in all the periods of our life If he that hath always liv'd thus innocently and no more that is a Heathen and a Pharisee could not by their innocence and proper righteousness obtain Heaven much less shall he who liv'd viciously and contracted filthy habits be accepted by all that amends he can make by such single acts of contrition by which nothing can be effected but that he hates sin and leaves it For if the most innocent by the legal righteousness is still but unprofitable much more is he such who hath prevaricated that and liv'd vilely and now in his amendment begins to enter that state which if it goes no further is still unprofitable They were severe words which our blessed Saviour said Luke 17.10 When ye have done all things which are commanded you say We are unprofitable servants that is when ye have done all things which are commanded in the law he sayes not all things which I shall command you for then we are not unprofitable servants in the Evangelical sense For he that obeys this form of doctrine is a good servant He is the friend of God If ye do whatsoever I command you ye are my friends Joh. 15.14 15. and that is more then profitable servants For I will not call you servants but friends saith our blessed Lord and for you a crown of righteousness is laid up against the day of recompences These therefore cannot be called unprofitable servants but friends sons and heirs for he that is an unprofitable servant shall be cast into outer darkness * To live therefore in innocence onely and according to the righteousness of the law is to be a servant but yet unprofitable and that in effect is to be no heir of the Promises for to these Piety or Evangelicall Righteousness is the onely title Godliness is profitable to all things having the promise of this life and of that which is to come For upon this account the works of the law cannot justifie us for the works of the law at the best were but innocence and ceremonial performances but we are justified by the works of the Gospel that is faith
and obedience For these are the righteousness of God they are his works revealed by his Spirit effected by his Grace promoted by his Gifts encouraged by special Promises sanctified by the Holy Ghost and accepted through Jesus Christ to all the great purposes of Glory and Immortality Since therefore a constant innocence could not justifie us unless we have the righteousness of God that is unless we superadde holiness and purity in the faith of Jesus Christ much less can it be imagined that he who hath transgressed the righteousness of the law and broken the Negative Precepts and the natural humane rectitude and hath superinduc'd vices contrary to be righteousness of God can ever hope to be justified by those little arrests of his sin and his beginnings to leave it upon his death-bed and his sorrow for it then when he cannot obtain the righteousness of God or the holiness of the Gospel It was good counsel that was given by a wise Heathen Dimidium facti qui coepit habet Horat. ep 2. l. 1. sapere aude Incipe qui rectè vivendi prorogat horam Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis at ille Labitur labetur in omne volubilis aevum It is good for a man to begin The Clown that stands by a river side expecting till all the water be run away may stay long enough before he gets to the other side He that will not begin to live well till he hath answered all objections and hath no lusts to serve no more appetites to please shall never arrive at happiness in the other world Be wise and begin betimes §. 5. Consideration of the objections against the former Doctrine 1. BUt why may not all this be done in an instant by the grace of God Cannot he infuse into us the habits of all the graces Evangelical Faith cannot be obtained by natural means and if it be procur'd by supernatural the Spirit of God is not retarded by the measures of an enemy and the dull methods of natural opposition Nescit tarda molimina Spiritus sancti gratia Without the Divine Grace we cannot work any thing of the righteousness of God but if he gives us his grace does not he make us chaste and patient humble and devout and all in an instant For thus the main Question seems to be confessed and granted that a habit is not remitted but by the introduction of the contrary but when you consider what you handle it is a cloud and nothing else for this admission of the necessity of a habit enjoyns no more labour nor care it requires no more time it introduces no active fears and infers no particular caution and implies the doing of no more then to the remission of a single act of one sin To this I answer that the grace of God is a supernatural principle and gives new aptnesses and inclinations powers and possibilities it invites and teaches it supplies us with arguments and answers objections it brings us into artificial necessities and inclines us sweetly and this is the semen Dei spoken of by S. John the seed of God thrown into the furrows of our hearts springing up unless we choke it to life eternal By these assistances we being helped can do our duty and we can expel the habits of vice and get the habits of vertue But as we cannot doe Gods work without Gods grace so Gods grace does not do our work without us For grace being but the beginnings of a new nature in us gives nothing but powers and inclinations The Spirit helpeth our infirmities so S. Paul explicates this mystery Rom. 8.26 And therefore when he had said By the grace of God I am what I am that is all is owing to his grace he also addes I have baboured more then they all yet not I that is not I alone sed gratia Dei mecum the grace of God that is with me For the grace of God stands at the door and knocks but we must attend to his voice and open the door and then he will enter and sup with us and we shall be with him The grace of God is like a graff put into a stock of another nature it makes use of the faculties and juice of the stock and natural root but converts all into its own nature But 2. We may as well say there can be a habit born with us as infus'd into us For as a natural habit supposes a frequency of action by him who hath naturall abilities so an infus'd habit if there were any such is a result and consequent of a frequent doing the works of the Spirit So that to say that God in an instant infuses into us a habit of Chastity c. is to say that he hath in an instant infus'd into us to have done the acts of that grace frequently For it is certain by experience that the frequent doing the actions of any grace increases the grace and yet the grace or aids of Gods Spirit are as necessary for the growth as for the beginnings of grace We cannot either will or do without his help he worketh both in us that is we by his help alone are enabled to do things above our nature But then we are the persons enabled and therefore we do these works as we do others not by the same powers but in the same manner When God raises a Cripple from his couch and gives him strength to move though the aid be supernatural yet the motion is after the manner of nature And it is evident in the matter of faith which though it be the gift of God yet it is seated in the Understanding which operates by way of discourse not by intuition The believer understands as a Man not as an Angel And when Christ by miracle restor'd a blinde eye still that eye did see by reception or else by emission of species just so as eyes that did see naturally So it is in habits For it is a contradiction to say that a perfect habit is infus'd in an instant For if a habit were infus'd it must be infus'd as a habit is acquir'd for else it is not a habit Habitus infusi insunduntur per modum acquisitorum Regul Scholast As if a motion should be infus'd it must still be successive as well as if it were natural But this device of infus'd habits is a fancy without ground and without sense without authority or any just grounds of confidence and it hath in it very bad effects For it destroys all necessity of our care and labour in the wayes of godliness all cautions of a holy life it is apt to minister pretences and excuses for a perpetually wicked life till the last of our dayes making men to trust to a late Repentance it puts men upon vain confidences and makes them relie for salvation upon dreams and empty notions it destroys all the duty of man and cuts off all entercourse of obedience and reward But it is sufficient
that there is no ground for it in Scripture nor in Antiquity nor in right Reason but it is infinitely destructive of all that wise conduct of Souls by which God would glorifie himself by the means of a free obedience and it is infinitely confuted by all those Scriptures which require our cooperation with the assistance of Gods holy Spirit For all the helps that the Spirit of Grace ministers to us is farre from doing our work for us that it onely enables us to do it for our selves and makes it reasonable that God should therefore exact it of us because we have no excuse and cannot plead disability To which purpose that discourse of S. Paul is highly convincing and demonstrative Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling Phil. 2.12 13. for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to our desire so it is better read that is fear not at all but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 throughly do your duty †Magis operamini Syrus Augescite in opere Arabs for according as you desire and pray God will be present to you with his grace to bear you through all your labours and temptations And therefore our conversion and the working our salvation is sometimes ascribed to God sometimes to men * 1 Cor. 5. 7 8. 2 Tim. 2.21 Jam. 4.8 Epâ—â— 4.22 23 24. Col. 3 9 10. to God as the prime and indeficient cause to man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to the fellow-worker with God it is the expression of S. Paul The Scripture mentions no other effect of Gods grace but such as I have now described But that Grace should do all our work alone and in an instant that which costs the Saints so much labour and fierce contentions so much sorrow and trouble so many prayers and tears so much watchfulness and caution so much fear and trembling so much patience and long-suffering so much toleration and contradiction and all this under the conduct of the Spirit in the midst of all the greatest helps of grace and the inhabitation of the holy Spirit of God that all this labour and danger should be spar'd to a vile person who hath griev'd and extinguish'd Gods holy Spirit and a way contriv'd for him that he should enjoy the pleasures of this world and the glories of the next is such a device as if it had any ground or colourable pretence for it would without the miracles of another grace destroy all piety from the face of the earth And in earnest it seems to me a strange thing that the Doctors of the Church of Rome should be so loose and remiss in this Article when they are so sierce in another that takes from such persons all manner of excuse It is I say very strange that it should be so possible and yet withall so unncessary to keep the Commandements Obj. 2. But if a single act of contrition cannot procure pardon of sins that are habitual then a wicked man that returns not till it be too late to root out vicious habits must despair of salvation I answer That such a man should doe well to ask his Physician whether it be possible for him to escape that sickness If his Physician say it is then the man need not despair for if he return to life and health it will not be too late for him by the grace of God to recover in his soul But if his Physician say he cannot recover first let the Physician be reproved for making his patient to despair I am sure he hath less reason to say he cannot live then there is to say such a person hath no promise that he shall be saved without performing the condition But the Physician if he be a wise man will say So farre as he understands by the rules of his art this man cannot recover but some secret causes of things there are or may be by which the event may be better then the most reasonable predictions of his art The same answer I desire may be taken in the Question of his soul Concerning which the Curate is to preach the rules and measures of God but not to give a resolution concerning the secret and final sentence 2. The case of the five foolish Virgins if we may construe it as it is expressed gives a sad account to such persons and unless that part of the Parable be insignificant which expresses their sorrow their diligence their desire their begging of oyle their going out to buy oyle before the Bridegroom came but after it was noised that he was coming and the insufficiency of all this we may too certainly conclude that much more then a single act of contrition and a moral revocation that is a sorrow and a nolition of the past sins may be done upon our death-bed without effect without a being accepted to pardon and salvation 3. When things are come to that sad state let the man hope as much as he can God forbid that I should be Author to him to despair The purpose of this discourse is that men in health should not put things to that desperate condition or make their hopes so little and afflicted that it may be disputed whether they be alive or no. 4. But this objection is nothing but a temptation and a snare a device to make me confess that the former arguments for fear men should despair ought to be answered and are not perfectly convincing I intended them onely for institution and instruction not to confute any person or any thing but to condemne sin and to resoue men from danger But truly I doe think they are rightly concluding as moral propositions are capable and if the consequent of them be that dying persons after a vicious life cannot hope ordinarily for pardon I am truly sorrowful that any man should fall into that sad state of things as I am really afflicted and sorrowful that any man should live vilely or perish miserably but then it ought not to be imputed to this doctrine that it makes men despair for the purpose and proper consequent of it is that men are warned to live so that they may be secur'd in their hopes that is that men give diligence to make their calling and election sure that they may take no desperate courses and fall into no desperate condition And certainly if any man preach the necessity of a good life and of actual obedience he may as well be charged to drive men to despair for the summe of the foregoing doctrine is nothing else but that it is necessary we should walk before God in all holy conversation and godliness But of this I shall give a large account in the fifth § Obj. 3. But if things be thus it is not good or safe to be a criminal Judge and all the Discipline of Warre will be unlawful and highly displeasing to God For if any one be taken in an act
chastity who cannot doe any acts of chastity or of temperance who have lost their stomack and have not any inclination or temptation to the contrary and every vertue must be cum potentiâ ad oppositum if it be not chosen it is not vertue nor rewardable And the case is almost the same to all persons young or old who have not opportunity of acting those graces in the matter of which they have formerly prevaricated To this I answer many things and they are of use in the explication of this material question 1. Old men may exercise many acts of chastity both internal and external For if they may be unchast they may also be chast But S. Paul speaks of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 men that being past feeling yet were given to lasciviousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 half men half boyes pruriâ—ntes in sepulchro For it is not the body but the soul that is wanton And an evil man may sin with ineffective lusts as he that lusts after a woman whom he cannot have sins with his soul Now where ever these unlawful desires can be there also they can be mortified and an old man can love to talk of his past vanities or not rescind them by repentance or desire that he were young and active in wickedness and therefore if he chooses not to doe so and therefore avoids these and the like out of hatred of his old impurities he does the proper works of that grace which he also may doe the easier because then his temptations to the contrary are not so strong but this advantage is not worth staying for so long They that doe so venture damnation a long time together and may also have an evil proper to that state greater then this little advantage I instance 2. If there were no other act of chastity to be exercised by old persons by reason of their disability yet the very accepting from the hands of God that disability and the delighting in that circumstance of things in which it is impossible to sin as formerly must needs be pleasing to God because it is a nolition of the former sins and a desire of pleasing him 3. Every act of sorrow for unchastity is an act of chastity and if this sorrow be great and lasting permanent and habitual it will be productive of much good And if to these the penitent addes penal actions and detestations of his crimes revenge and apt expressions of his holy anger against his sin these doe produce a quality in the soul contrary to that which made him formerly consent to lust 4. When a vicious habit is to be extirpated and the contrary introduc'd it is not necessary that the contrary be acted by the body but be radicated in the soul It is necessary that the body doe not sin in that instance but it is not always required that contrary acts be done by the body Suppose Origen had been a lustful person before his castration yet he might have been habitually chast afterwards by doing spiritual acts of a corporal chastity And there are many sins whose scene lies in the body to which the body afterwards cannot oppose a bodily act in the same instance as he that by intemperate drinking once or oftner fals into a loathing of wine he that dismembers himself and many others for which a repentance is possible and necessary but yet a contrary specifick act cannot be opposed In these cases it is sufficient that the habit be plac'd in the soul and a perfect contrary quality superinduc'd which is to be done by a frequent repetition of the acts of repentance proper to the sin 5. There are some sins for which amends is to be made in the way of commutation when it cannot be in the proper instance Redime peccata tua eleemosynis Dan. 4.27 said Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar Redeem thy sins with alms and thy iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor Our English Bibles read this Break off thy sins by alms as if alms were directly contrary to pride or lust or gluttony or tyranny and the shewing mercy to the poor a direct intercision and interruption of the sin He that gives alms that he may keep his lust loses his soul and his money too But he that leaves his lust or is driven from it and gives alms to obtain Gods favour for his pardon by doing something that is gracious in his eyes this man is a good penitent if his alms be great and proportionable given freely and without constraint when he can keep them and receive and retain the temporal advantage and be assisted by all those other acts and habits of which his present state is capable It cannot be said that to give alms can in all such cases be sufficient as it will be hard to say that so many acts of the contrary grace will suffice to get a habit or obtain a pardon but it is true that to give alms is a proper action of repentance in such cases and is in order to pardon For 6. As there is a supreme habit of vice a transcendent vileness that is a custome and readiness to doe every sin as it is presented in its proper temptation and this is worse then the habit of any one sin so there is a transcendent habit of grace by which a man is so holy and just and good that he is ready to obey God in every instance That is malice and this is charity When a man hath this grace habitually although it may be so that he cannot produce the proper specifick habit opposite to his sin for which he specially repents yet his supreme habit does contain in it the specifick habit virtually and transcendently An act of this charity will not doe this but the habit will For he that does a single act of charity may also doe a single act of malice and he that denies this knows not what he says nor ever had experience of himself or any man else For if he that does an act of charity that is he who by a good motion from Gods Spirit does any thing because God hath commanded to say that this man will doe every thing which is so commanded is to say that a good man can never fall into a great sin which is evidently untrue But if he that does one act in obedience to God or in love to him for obedience is love will also doe more then every man that does one act to please his senses may as well be supposed that he will doe more and then no mans life should have in it any variety but be all of a piece intirely good or intirely evil I see no difference in the instances neither can there be so long as a man in both states hath a power to choose But then it will follow that a single act of contrition or of charity cannot put a man into the state of the Divine favour it must be the grace or habit of charity and that is a
magazine of habits by equivalency and is formally the state of grace And upon these accounts if old men will repent and doe what they can do and are enabled in that state they have no cause to be afflicted with too great fears concerning the instances of their habits or the sins of their youth Concerning persons that are seis'd upon by a lingring sickness I have nothing peculiar to say save this onely That their case is in something better then that of old men in some things worse It is better because they have in many periods of their sickness more hopes of returning to health and long life then old men have of returning to strength and youth and a protracted age and therefore their repentance if it be hearty hath in it also more degrees of being voluntary and relative to a good life But in this their case is worse An old man that is healthful is better seated in the station of penitents and because he can choose contraries is the more acceptable if he chooses well But the sick man though living long in that disadvantage cannot be indifferent in so many instances as the other may and in this case it is remarkable what S. Austin said Si autem vis agere poenitentiam quando jam peccare non potes peccata te dimiserunt non tu illa To abstain from sin when a man cannot sin is to be forsaken by sin not to forsake it At the best it is bad enough But I doubt not but if they doe what they can doe there is mercy for them which they shall finde in the day of recompences Obj. 7. But how shall any man know whether he have perform'd his repentance as he ought For if it be necessary that he get the habits of vertue and extirpate the habits of vice that is if by habits God do and we are to make judgements of our repentance who can be certain that his sins are pardon'd and himself reconcil'd to God and that he shall be sav'd The reasons of his doubts and fears are these 1. Because it is a long time before a habit can be lost and the contrary obtain'd 2. Because while one habit lessens another may undiscernibly increase and it may be a degree of covetousness may expel a degree of prodigality 3. Because a habit may be lurking secretly and for want of opportunity of acting in that instance not betray it self or be discover'd or attempted to be cur'd For he that was not tempted in that kinde where he sinn'd formerly may for ought he knows say that he hath not sinn'd onely because he was not tempted but if that be all the habit may be resident and kill him secretly These things must be accounted for 1. But to him that inquires whether it be light or darkness in what regions his inheritance is design'd and whether his Repentance is sufficient I must give rather a reproof then an answer or at least such an answer as will tell there is no need of an answer For indeed it is not good inquiring into measures and little portions of grace * Love God with all thy heart and all thy strength do it heartily and do it alwayes If the thing be brought to pass clearly and discernibly the pardon is certain and not orious But if it be in a middle state between ebbe and floud so is our pardon too and if in that undiscerned state it be in the thing certain that thou art on the winning and prevailing side if really thou doest belong unto God he will take care both of thy intermediall comfort and final interest * But when people are too inquisitive after comfort it is a signe their duty is imperfect In the same proportion also it is not well when we enquire after a sign for our state of grace and holiness If the habit be compleat and intire it is as discernible as light and we may as well enquire for a sign to know when we are hungry and thirsty when you can walk or play on the lute The thing it self is its best indication 2. But if men will quarrel at any truth because it supposes some men to be in such a case that they do not know certainly what will become of them in the event of things I know not how it can be help'd I am sure they that complain here that is the Roman Doctors are very fierce Preachers of the certainty of salvation or of our knowledge of it But be they who they will since all this uncertainty proceeds not from the doctrine but from the evil state of things into which habitual sinners have put themselves there will be the less care taken for an answer But certainly it seems strange that men who have liv'd basely and viciously all their dayes who are respited from an eternal Hell by the miracles of mercy concerning whom it is a wonderful thing that they had not really perished long before that these men returning at the last should complain of hard usage because it cannot be told to them as confidently as to new baptized Innocents that they are certain of their salvation as S. Peter and S. Paul * But however both they and better men then they must be content with those glorious measures of the Divine mercy which are described and upon any terms be glad to be pardon'd and to hope and fear to mourn and to be afflicted to be humbled and to tremble and then to work out their salvation with fear and trembling 3. But then to advance one step further there may be a certainty where is no evidence that is the thing may be certain in it self though not known to the man and there are degrees of hope concerning the final event of our souls For suppose it cannot be told to the habitual sinner that his habits of sin are overcome and that the Spirit rules in all the regions of his soul yet is he sure that his vicious habits do prevail is he sure that sin does reign in his mortal body If he be then let him not be angry with this doctrine for it is as bad with him as any doctrine can affirm But if he be not sure that sin reigns then can he not hope that the Spirit does rule and if so then also he may hope that his sins are pardon'd and that he shall be sav'd And if he look for greater certainty then that of a holy and a humble hope he must stay till he have a revelation it cannot be had from the certainty of any proposition in Scripture applicable to his case and person 4. If a habit be long before it be master'd if a part of it may consist with its contrary if a habit may lurk secretly and undiscernibly all these things are aggravations of the danger of an habitual sinner and are very true and great engagements of his watchfulness and fear his caution and observance But then nor these nor any thing else can evacuate the former
7.7 Sin taking occasion by the law wrought in me all concupiscence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apprehending impunity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by occasion of the Commandement viz. so expressed and established as it was Because in the Commandement forbidding to lust or covet there was no penalty annexed or threatned in the sanction or in the explication Murder was death and so was adultery and rebellion Theft was punished severely too and so other things in their proportion but the desires God left under a bare restraint and affixed no penalty in the law Now sin that is men that had a minde to sin taking occasion hence that is taking this impunity for a sufficient warrant prevail'd by frequent actions up to an evil custome and a habit and so rul'd them who were not renewed and overruled by the holy Spirit of grace 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a caution in law or a security so Suidas and Phavorinus It is used also for impunity in Demosthenes though the Grammarians note it not But as to the thing When ever you see a sin thrive start back suddenly and with a trembling fear for it does nurse the sin from a single action to a filthy habit and that always dwels in the suburbs of the horrible regions No man is so much to be pitied as he that thrives and is let alone in his sin there is evil towards that man But then God is kinde to a sinner when he makes his sin to be uneasy and troublesome 6. But in prosecution of the former observation it is of very great use that the vigorous and healthful penitent doe use corporal mortifications and austerities by way of penance and affliction for every single act of that sin he commits whose habit he intends to mortify If he makes himself smart and never spare his sin but still punish it besides that it is a good act of indignation and revenge which S. Paul commends in all holy penitents it is also a way to take off the pleasure of the sin by which it would fain make abode and seisure upon the will A man will not so soon delight or love to abide with that which brings him affliction in present and makes his life miserable This advice I learn from Maimonides Morch Nevocin 341. Ab inolitâ peccandi consuetudine non posse hominem avelli nisi gravibus poenis Nothing so good to cure an evil custome of sinning as the inflicting great smart upon the offender He that is going to cure his habitual drunkenness if ever he be overtaken again let him for the first offence fast two days with bread and water and the next time double his smart and let the man load himself till he groans under it and he will be glad to take heed 7. He that hath sinn'd often and is now returning let him watch if ever his sin be offer'd to him by a temptation and that temptation dressed at formerly that he be sure not to neglect that opportunity of beginning to break his evil habit He that hath committed fornication and repents if ever he be tempted again not to seek for it but to act it and may enter upon the sin with ease and readiness then let him refuse his sin so dressed so ready so fitted for action and the event will be this that besides it is a great indication and sign of an excellent repentance it discountenances the habit and breaks the combination of its parts and disturbs its dwelling but besides it is so signal an action of repentance and so pleasing to the Spirit of God and of a good man that it is apt to make him doe so again and proceed to crucify that habit upon which he hath had so lucky a day and so great a victory and success It is like giving to a person and obliging him by some very great favour He that does so is for ever after ready and apt to doe that obliged person still more kindness lest the first should perish When a man hath gotten an estate together he is apt saith Plutarch to save little things and be provident even of the smallest summe because that now if it be sav'd will come to something it will be seen and preserv'd in his heap But he that is poor cannot become rich with those little arts of providence and therefore he â—ets them goe for his pleasure since he cannot keep them with hopes to improve his bank so is such an earnest and entry into piety it is such a stock of holiness that it is worth preserving and to have resisted once so bravely does adde confidence to the spirit that it can overcome and makes it probable that he may get a crown However it fals out it is an excellent act and signification of a hearty repentance and conversion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philemon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is a just man not whosoever does no wrong but he that can and will not Maimonides saith excellently to the same purpose For to the Question Quaenam tandem est poenitentia perfecta He answers This is true and perfect repentance Canâ—n poenit cap. 2.1 Cum quis ad manum habet quo priùs peccavit jam penes ipsum est idem perpetrare recedens tamen illuà non committit poenitentiae causâ neque timore cohibitus neque defectu virium When the power and opportunity is present and the temptation it may be ready and urging when it is in a mans hand to doe the same thing yet retiring he commits it not onely for piety or repentance sake not being restrain'd by fear or want of powers 8. If such opportunities of his sin be not presented it is never the worse The penitent need not be fond of them for they are dangers which prove death if they be not triumphed over and if they be yet the man hath escap'd a danger and may both prove and act his repentance without it But therefore he that is not so tried and put to it must doe all that which he is put to and execute his fierce anger against the sin and by proper instances of mortification endevour the destruction of it and although every man hath not so glorious a trial and indication of his Repentance as in the former instance yet he that denies himself in any instance of his sin and so in all that he can or is tempted in does the same thing all the same duty and with less danger and with less gloriousness * But if it happen that his sin urge him not at all as formerly or the occasion is gone and the matter is subtracted he is to follow the measures of old men described in the next § 9. Let the penitent be infinitely careful that he does not mortify one vicious habit by a contrary vice but by a contrary vertue For to what purpose is it that you are cur'd of prodigality and then die by covetousness Quid te exempta juvat spinis
be pardoned so long as their vicious habit remains and they know that to overcome and mortifie a vicious habit is a work of time and great labour and if this be the measure of dying penitents as well as of living and healthful they will sink in judgement that have not time to do their duty But then why the Church of those ages and particularly S. Austin should hope and despair at the same time for them that is knew no ground of revelations upon which to fix any hope of pardon for them and yet should exhort them to Repentance which without hopes of pardon is to no purpose there is no sensible account to be given but this that for ought they knew God might do more then they knew and more then he had promised but whether he would or not they knew not but by that means they thought they fairly quit their hands of such persons 6. But after all this strict survey of answers if we be call'd to account for being so kinde it must be confess'd that things are spoken out of charity and pity more then of knowledge The case of these men is sad and deplorable and it is piety when things are come to that state and saddest event to shew mercy by searching all the corners of revelation for comfort that God may be as much glorified and the dying men assisted as much as may be I remember the Jews are reproved by some for repealing the last verse but one in the book of Isaiah and setting it after the last of all That being a verse of mercy this of sorrow and threatning as if they would be more merciful then God himself and thought it unfit to end so excellent a book with so sad a cursing Indeed Gods wayes are best and his measures the surest and therefore it is not good to promise where God hath not promised and to be kinde where he is angry and to be free of his pardon where he hath shut up and seal'd his treasures But if they that say God hath threatned all such sinners as dying penitents after wicked life are and yet that they must not despair are to be reproved as too kinde then they much more who confidently promise heaven at last It is indeed a compliance with humane misery that makes it fit to speak what hopeful things we can but if these hopes can easily be reproved I am sure the former severity cannot so easily be confuted That may this cannot 1. But now things being put into this constitution the inquiry into what manner of Repentance the dying penitent is oblig'd to will be of no great difficulty Qui dicit omnia nihil excipit He that is tied to all can be excus'd from none All that he can do is too little if God shall deal with him according to the conditions of the Gospel which are describ'd and therefore he must not inquire into measures but do all absolutely all that he can in that sad period Particularly 2. Let him examine his Conscience most curiously according as his time will permit and his other abilities because he ought to be sure that his intentions are so reall to God and to Religion that he hath already within him a resolution so strong a repentance so holy a sorrow so deep a hope so pure a charity so sublime that no temptation no time no health no interest could in any circumstance of things ever tempt him from God and prevail 3. Let him make a general confession of the sins of his whole life with all the circumstances of aggravation let him be mightily humbled and hugely ashamed and much in the accusation of himself and bitterly lament his folly and misery let him glorifie God and justifie him confessing that if he perishes it is but just if he does not it is a glorious an infinite mercy a mercy not yet revealed a mercy to be look'd for in the day of wonders the day of Judgement Let him accept his sickness and his death humbly at the hands of God and meekly pray that God would accept that for punishment and so consign his pardon for the rest through the bloud of Jesus Let him cry mightily unto God incessantly begging for pardon and then hope as much as he can even so much as may exalt the excellency of the Divine mercy but not too confidently lest he presume above what is written 4. Let the dying penitent make what amends he can possibly in the matter of real injuries and injustices that he is guilty of though it be to the ruine of his estate and that will go a great way in deprecation Let him ask forgiveness and offer forgiveness make peace transmit charity and provisions and piety to his relatives 5. Next to these it were very fitting that the dying penitent did use all the means he can to raise up his spirit and do internal actions of Religion with great fervour and excellency To love God highly to be ready to suffer whatsoever can come to pour out his complaints with great passion and great humility adding to these and the like great effusions of charity holy and prudent undertakings of severity and Religion in case he shall recover and if he can let him do some great thing something that does in one little body of action signifie great affections any heroical act any transportation of a holy zeal in his case does help to abbreviate the work of many years If these things be thus done it is all that can be done at that time and as well as it can be then done what the event of it will be God onely knows and we all shall know at the day of Judgement S. Aug. habetur de poen dist 7 In this case the Church can give the Sacrament but cannot give security Meditations and Prayers to be used in all the foregoing cases CAn the Ethiopian change his skin Jer. 13.23 or the Leopard his spots then may ye learn to do good that are accustomed to do evil This is thy lot the portion of thy measures Ver. 25. from me saith the Lord because thou hast forgotten me Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness Ver. 16. and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains lest while you look for light he turn it into the shadow of death and make it gross darkness What wilt thou say when he shall punish Ver. 21. shall not sorrow take thee as a woman in travel And if thou say in thine heart Ver. 22. Wherefore came these things upon me for the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered and thy heels made bare I have seen thine adulteries and thy neighings Ver. 27. the lewdness of thy whoredoms and thine abominations Wo unto thee wilt thou not be made clean when shall it once be saith the Lord God Thus saith the Lord unto this people Jer. 14.10 Thus have they loved to wander they have not
and peevish morosity in all vertuous imployments but greedy and fierce in the election and prosecution of evil actions and designs But now O God I have no will but what is thine and I will rather die then consent and choose any thing that I know displeases thee My heart O God was a fountain of evil thoughts ungracious words and irregular actions because my passions were not obedient nor orderly neither temperate nor govern'd neither of a fitting measure nor carried to a right object But now O God I present them unto thee not as a fit oblation but as the Lepers and the blinde the lame and the crooked were brought unto the holy Jesus to be made straight and clean useful and illuminate and when thou hast taken into thy possession what is thine and what I stole from thee or detained violently and which the Devil did usurp then thou wilt sanctifie and save it use it as thine own and make it to be so for ever V. BLessed God refuse not thy returning son I have prodigally wasted my talents and spent my time in riotous and vain living but I have not lost my title and relation to thee my Father O my God I have the sorrow of an humble penitent the purposes of a converted sinner the love of a pardon'd person the zeal of an obliged and redeem'd prisoner the hope of him that feels thy present goodness and longs for more Reject me not O my God but do thou work all my works within me My heart is in thy hands and I know that the way of man is not in himself it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps But do thou guide me into the way of righteousness work in me an excellent Repentance a great caution and observance an humble fear a prudent and a religious hope and a daily growing charity work in me to will and to do of thy good pleasure Then shall I praise thy name and love thy excellencies and obey thy Commandements and suffer thy impositions and be what thou wouldst have me to be that I being rescu'd from the possession of the Devil and the torments of perishing souls may be admitted to serve thee and be a Minister of thy honour in the Kingdomes of Grace and Glory through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen A Prayer for an old person returning after a wicked life I. O Eternal God give me leave to speak for my self before I die I would fain live and be heal'd I have been too long thine enemy and would not be so for ever My heart is broken within me and all my fortunes are broken without I know not how to speak and I must not I dare not hold my tongue II. O My God can yesterday be recall'd and the flying hours be stopped In my youth I had not the prudence and caution of old age but is it possible that in my old age I may be restored to the hopes and opportunities of youth Thou didst make the Sun to stand still at the prayer of Joshua and return back at the importunity of Hezekiah O do thou make a new account for me and reckon not the dayes of my youth but from this day reckon the beginnings of my life and measure it by the steps of duty and the light of the Sun of Righteousness now rising upon my heart III. I Am ashamed O God I am ashamed that I should betray my reason shame my nature dishonour all my strengths debauch my understanding and baffle all my faculties for so base so vile affections so unrewarding interests O my God where is all that vanity which I suck'd so greedily as the wilde Asses do the wind whither is that pleasure and madness gone which so ravish'd all my senses and made me deaf to the holy charms of thy divinest Spirit Behold O God I die for that which is not and unless thy mercy be my rescue for ever I shall suffer torments insufferable still to come still to succeed for having drunk of unsatisfying perishing waters which had no current no abode IV. O Dear God smite me not yet respite me one portion of time I dare not say how much but even as much as thou pleasest O stay a while and try me but this once It is true O God I have lost my strength and given my vigorous years to that which I am asham'd to think on But yet O Lord if thou pleasest my soul can be as active and dutiful and affectionate and humble and sorrowful and watchful as ever Thou doest not save any for his own worthiness but eternal life is a gift and thou canst if thou pleasest give it unto me But why does my soul run thither with all its loads of sin and shame upon it That is too great yet to be thought of O give me pardon and give me sorrow and give me a great a mighty grace to do the duty of a whole life in the remaining portion of my dayes V. O My gracious Lord whatever thy sentence be yet let me have the honour to serve thee Let me contribute something to thy glory let me converse with thy Saints and Servants in the entercourses of piety let me be admitted to be a servant to the meanest of thy servants to do something that thou lovest O God my God do what thou pleasest so I may not for ever die in the sad and dishonourable impieties of the damned Let me but be admitted to thy service in all the degrees of my soul and all the dayes of my short life and my soul shall have some comfort because I signifie my love and duty to thee for whom I will not refuse to die O my God I will not beg of thee to give me comfort but to give me duty and imployment Smite me if thou pleasest but smite me here kill me if thou pleasest I have deserved it but I would fain live to serve thee and for no other reason but that thou mayest love to pardon and to sanctifie me VI. O Blessed Jesus do thou intercede for me thy Father hears thee in all things and thou knowest our infirmities and hast felt our miseries and didst die to snatch us from the intolerable flames of Hell and although thou givest thy gifts in differing proportions to thy servants yet thou dost equally offer pardon to all thy enemies that will come unto thee and beg it O give me all faith and all charity and a spirit highly compunctive highly industrious passionate prudent and indefatigable in holy services Open thy fountains gracious Lord and bath my stained soul in thy blood Wash the Ethiop cleanse the Leper dress the strangers wounds and forgive thy enemy VII I Will not O my God I dare not distrust those infinite glories of thy mercy and graciousness by which thou art ready to save all the world The sins of all mankinde together are infinitely less then thy mercy and thou who didst redeem the Heathen world wilt also I hope
be tied to any particular repentance relative to this sin the answer will not be difficult I remember a pretty device of Hierome of Florence a famous Preacher not long since who used this argument to prove the blessed Virgin Mary to be free from Original sin Because it is more likely if the blessed Virgin had been put to her choice she would rather have desired of God to have kept her free from venial actual sin then from Original Since therefore God hath granted her the greater and that she never sinn'd actually it is to be presum'd God did not deny to her the smaller favour and therefore she was free from Original Upon this many a pretty story hath been made and rare arguments fram'd and sierce contestations whether it be more agreeable to the piety and prudence of the Virgin Mother to desire immunity from Original sin that is deadly or from a venial actual sin that is not deadly This indeed is voluntary and the other is not but the other deprives us of grace and this does not God was more offended by that but we offend him more by this The dispute can never be ended upon their accounts but this Gordian knot I have now untied as Alexander did by destroying it and cutting it all in pieces But to return to the Question S. Austin was indeed a fierce Patron of this device and one of the chief inventers and finishers of it and his sense of it is declared in his Book De peccatorum medicinâ Cap. 3. homil 50. where he endevours largely to prove that all our life time we are bound to mourn for the inconveniences and evil consequents deriv'd from Original sin I dare say every man is sufficiently displeased that he is liable to sickness weariness displeasure melancholy sorrow folly imperfection and death dying with groans and horrid spasms and convulsions In what sense these are the effects of Adams sin and though of themselves natural yet also upon his account made penal I have already declar'd and need no more to dispute my purpose being onely to establish such truths as are in order to practice and a holy life to the duties of repentance and amendment But our share of Adams sin either being in us no sin at all or else not to be avoided or amended it cannot be the matter of repentance Neminem autem rectè it a loqui poenitere sese quòd natus sit aut poenitere quòd mortalis sit aut quòd ex offenso fortè vulnerató que corpore dolorem sentiat Li. 17. c. 1. said A. Gellius A man is not properly said to repent that he was born or that he shall die or that he feels pain when his leg is hurt he gives this reason Quando istiusmodi rerum nec consilium sit nostrum nec arbitrium As these are besides our choyce so they cannot fall into our deliberation and therefore as they cannot be chosen so neither refused and therefore not repented of for that supposes both that they were chosen once and now refused * As Adam was not bound to repent of the sins of all his posterity so neither are we tied to repent of his sins Neither did I ever see in any ancient Office or forms of prayer publick or private any prayer of humiliation prescrib'd for original sin They might deprecate the evil consequents but never confess themselves guilty of the formal sin Adde to this Original sin is remitted in Baptism by the consent of those Schools of learning who teach this article and therefore is not reserv'd for any other repentance and that which came without our own consent is also to be taken off without it That which came by the imputation of a sin may also be taken off by the imputation of righteousness that is as it came without sin so it must also goe away without trouble But yet because the Question may not render the practice insecure I adde these Rules by way of advice and caution §. 7. Advices relating to the matter of Original sin 1. IT is very requisite that we should understand the state of our own infirmity the weakness of the flesh the temptations and diversions of the spirit that by understanding our present state we may prevent the evils of carelesness and security * Our evils are the imperfections and sorrows inherent in or appendant to our bodies our souls our spirits * In our bodies we finde weakness and imperfection sometimes crookedness sometimes monstrosity filthiness and weariness infinite numbers of diseases and an uncertain cure great pain and restless night hunger and thirst daily necessities ridiculous gestures madness from passions distempers and disorders great labour to provide meat and drink and oftentimes a loathing when we have them if we use them they breed sicknesses if we use them not we die and there is such a certain healthlesness in many things to all and in all things to some men and at some times that to supply a need is to bring a danger and if we eat like beasts onely of one thing our souls are quickly weary if we eat variety we are sick and intemperate and our bodies are inlets to sin and a stage of temptation If we cherish them they undoe us if we doe not cherish them they die we suffer illusion in our dreams and absurd fancies when we are waking our life is soon done and yet very tedious it is too long and too short darkness and light are both troublesome and those things which are pleasant are often unwholsome wholesome Sweet smels make the head ake and those smels which are medicinal in some diseases are intolerable to the sense The pleasures of our body are bigger in expectation then in the possession and yet while they are expected they torment us with the delay and when they are enjoyed they are as if they were not they abuse us with their vanity and vex us with their volatile and fugitive nature Our pains are very frequent alone and very often mingled with pleasures to spoil them and he that feels one sharp pain feels not all the pleasures of the world if they were in his power to have them We live a precarious life begging help of every thing and needing the repairs of every day and being beholding to beasts and birds to plants and trees to dirt and stones to the very excrements of beasts and that which dogs and horses throw forth Our motion is slow and dull heavy and uneasy we cannot move but we are quickly tired and for every days labour we need a whole night to recruit our lost strengths we live like a lamp unless new materials be perpetually poured in we live no longer then a fly and our motion is not otherwise then a clock we must be pull'd up once or twice in twenty four hours and unless we be in the shadow of death for six or eight hours every night we shall be scarce in the shadows of life the other
sixteen Heat and cold are both our enemies and yet the one always dwels within and the other dwels round about us The chances and contingencies that trouble us are no more to be numbred then the minutes of eternity The Devil often hurts us and men hurt each other oftner and we are perpetually doing mischief to our selves The stars doe in their courses fight against some men and all the elements against every man the heavens send evil influences the very beasts are dangerous and the air we suck in does corrupt our lungs many are deformed and blinde and ill coloured and yet upon the most beauteous face is plac'd one of the worst sinks of the body and we are forc'd to pass that through our mouthes oftentimes which our eye and our stomack hates Pliny did wittily and elegantly represent this state of evil things Lib. 6. Prooem Itaque foelicitèr homo natus jacet manibus pedibúsque devinctis flens animal caeteris imperaturum à suppliciis vitam auspicatur unam tantum ob culpam quia natum est A man is born happily but at first he lies bound hand and foot by impotency and cannot stir the creature weeps that is born to rule over all other creatures and begins his life with punishments for no fault but that he was born In short The body is a region of diseases of sorrow and nastiness and weakness and temptation Here is cause enough of being humbled Neither is it better in the soul of man where ignorance dwells and passion rules 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After death came in there entred also a swarm of passions And the will obeys every thing but God Fertur equis Auriga neque audit currus habenas Our judgement is often abused in matters of sense and one faculty guesses at truth by confuting another and the error of the eye is corrected by something of reason or a former experience Our fancy is often abus'd and yet creates things of it self by tying disparate things together that can cohere no more then Musick and a Cable then Meat and Syllogisms and yet this alone does many times make credibilities in the understandings Our Memories are so frail that they need instruments of recollection and laborious artifices to help them and in the use of these artifices sometimes we forget the meaning of those instruments and of those millions of sins which we have committed we scarce remember so many as to make us sorrowful or asham'd Our judgements are baffled with every Sophism and we change our opinion with a wind and are confident against truth but in love with error We use to reprove one error by another and lose truth while we contend too earnestly for it Infinite opinions there are in matters of Religion and most men are confident and most are deceived in many things and all in some and those few that are not confident have onely reason enough to suspect their own reason We do not know our own bodies not what is within us nor what ails us when we are sick nor whereof we are made nay we oftentimes cannot tell what we think or believe or love We desire and hate the same thing speak against and run after it We resolve and then consider we binde our selves and then finde causes why we ought noo to be bound and want not some pretences to make our selves believe we were not bound Prejudice and Interest are our two great motives of believing we weigh deeper what is extrinsical to a question then what is in its nature and oftener regard who speaks then what is said The diseases of our soul are infinite Eccles Hier. c. 3. Part. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Dionysius of Athens Mankinde of old fell from those good things which God gave him and now is fallen into a life of passion and a state of death In sum it follows the temper or distemper of the body and sailing by such a Compass and being carried in so rotten a vessell especially being empty or fill'd with lightness and ignorance and mistakes it must needs be exposed to the danger and miseries of every storm which I choose to represent in the words of Cicero In Hortens Ex humanae vitae erroribus aerumnis fit ut verum sit illum quod est apud Aristotelem sic nostros animos cum corporibus copulatos ut vivos cum mortuis esse conjunctos The soul joyned with the body is like the conjunction of the living and the dead the dead are not quickened by it but the living are afflicted and die But then if we consider what our spirit is we have reason to lie down flat upon our faces and confess Gods glory and our own shame When it is at the best it is but willing but can do nothing without the miracle of Grace Our spirit is hindred by the body and cannot rise up whither it properly tends with those great weights upon it It is foolish and improvident large in desires and narrow in abilities naturally curious in trifles and inquisitive after vanities but neither understands deeply nor affectionately relishes the things of God pleas'd with forms cousen'd with pretences satisfi'd with shadows incurious of substances and realities It is quick enough to finde doubts and when the doubts are satisfied it raises scruples that is it is restless after it is put to sleep and will be troubled in despight of all arguments of peace It is incredibly negligent of matters of Religion and most solicitous and troubled in the things of the world We love our selves and despise others judging most unjust sentences and by peevish and cross measures Covetousness and Ambition Gain and Empire are the proportions by which we take account of things We hate to be govern'd by others even when we cannot dress our selves and to be forbidden to do or have a thing is the best art in the world to make us greedy of it The flesh and the spirit perpetually are at * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Macar hom 21. strife the spirit pretending that his ought to be the dominion and the flesh alleaging that this is her state and her day We hate our present condition and know not how to better our selves our changes being but like the tumblings and tossings in a Feaver from trouble to trouble that 's all the variety We are extremely inconstant and alwayes hate our own choice we despair sometimes of Gods mercies and are confident in our own follies as we order things we cannot avoid little sins and doe not avoid great ones We love the present world though it be good for nothing and undervalue infinite treasures if they be not to be had till the day of recompences We are peevish if a servant does but break a glass and patient when we have thrown an ill cast for eternity throwing away the hopes of a glorious Crown for wine and dirty silver We know that our prayers if
with weeping and on my eie-lids is the shadow of death Not for any injustice in my hand also my prayer is pure Wretched man that I am Rom. 7.24 who shall deliver me from the body of this death I thank God I am delivered through Jesus Christ our Lord. But now being made free from sin 6.22 and become servants of God ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life For the wages of sin is death But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies V. 12,14 that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof For sin shall not have dominion over you for ye are not under the law but under grace The PRAYER O Almighty God great Father of Men and Angels thou art the preserver of men and the great lover of souls thou didst make every thing perfect in its kinde and all that thou didst make was very good onely we miserable creatures sons of Adam have suffered the falling Angels to infect us with their leprosie of pride and so we entred into their evil portion having corrupted our way before thee and are covered with thy rod and dwell in a cloud of thy displeasure behold me the meanest of thy servants humbled before thee sensible of my sad condition weak and miserable sinful and ignorant full of need wanting thee in all things and neither able to escape death without a Saviour nor to live a life of holiness without thy Spirit O be pleas'd to give me a portion in the new birth break off the bands and fetters of my sin cure my evil inclinations correct my indispositions and natural averseness from the severities of Religion let me live by the measures of thy law not by the evil example and disguises of the world Renew a right spirit within me and cast me not away from thy presence lest I should retire to the works of darkness and enter into those horrible regions where the light of thy countenance never shineth II. I Am ashamed O Lord I am ashamed that I have dishonoured so excellent a Creation Thou didst make us upright and create us in innocence And when thou didst see us unable to stand in thy sight and that we could never endure to be judged by the Covenant of works thou didst renew thy mercies to us in the new Covenant of Jesus Christ and now we have no excuse nothing to plead for our selves much less against thee but thou art holy and pure and just and merciful Make me to be like thee holy as thou art holy merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful obedient as our holy Saviour Jesus meek and charitable temperate and chaste humble and patient according to that holy example that my sins may be pardoned by his death and my spirit renewed by his Spirit that passing from sin to grace from ignorance to the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ I may pass from death to life from sorrow to joy from earth to heaven from the present state of misery and imperfection to the glorious inheritance prepar'd for the Saints and Sons of light the children of the new birth the brethren of our Lord and Brother our Judge and our Advocate our Blessed Saviour and Redeemer JESVS Amen A Prayer to be said by a Matron in behalf of her husband and family that a blessing may descend upon their posterity I. O Eternal God our most merciful Lord and gracious Father thou art my guide the light of mine eyes the joy of my heart the author of my hope and the object of my love and worshippings thou relievest all my needs and determin'st all my doubts and art an eternal fountain of blessing open and running over to all thirsty and weary souls that come and cry to thee for mercy and refreshment Have mercy upon thy servant and relieve my fears and sorrows and the great necessities of my family for thou alone O Lord canst doe it II. FIt and adorn every one of us with a holy and a religious spirit and give a double portion to thy servant my dear husband Give him a wise heart a prudent severe and indulgent care over the children which thou hast given us His heart is in thy hand and the events of all things are in thy disposition Make it a great part of his care to promote the spiritual and eternal interest of his children not to neglect their temporal relations and necessities but to provide states of life for them in which with fair advantages they may live chearfully serve thee diligently promote the interest of the Christian family in all their capacities that they may be alwayes blessed and alwayes innocent devout and pious and may be graciously accepted by thee to pardon and grace and glory through Jesus Christ Amen III. BLess O God my sons with excellent understandings love of holy and noble things sweet dispositions innocent deportment diligent souls chaste healthful and temperate bodies holy and religious spirits that they may live to thy glory and be useful in their capacities to the servants of God and all their neighbours and the Relatives of their conversation Bless my daughters with a humble and a modest carriage and excellent meekness a great love of holy things a severe chastity a constant holy and passionate Religion O my God never suffer them to fall into folly and the sad effects of a wanton loose and indiscreet spirit possess their fancies with holy affections be thou the covering of their eyes and the great object of their hopes and all their desires Blessed Lord thou disposest all things sweetly by thy providence thou guidest them excellently by thy wisdome thou unitest all circumstances and changes wonderfully by thy power and by thy power makest all things work for the good of thy servants Be pleased so to dispose my daughters that if thou shouldst call them to the state of a married life they may not dishonour their family nor grieve their parents nor displease thee but that thou wilt so dispose of their persons and the accidents and circumstances of that state that it may be a state of holiness to the Lord and blessing to thy servants And until thy wisdome shall know it fit to bring things so to pass let them live with all purity spending their time religiously and usefully O most blessed Lord enable their dear father with proportionable abilities and opportunities of doing his duty and charities toward them and them with great obedience and duty toward him and all of us with a love toward thee above all things in the world that our portion may be in love and in thy blessings through Jesus Christ our dearest Lord and most gracious Redeemer IV. O My God pardon thy servant pity my infirmities hear the passionate desires of thy humble servant in thee alone is my trust my heart and all my wishes are towards thee Thou hast
Minde but because he hath also relishes and gusts in the flesh and they also seem sapid and delightful he desires them also So that this man fain would and he would not and he does sin willingly and unwillingly at the same time We see by a sad experience some men all their life time stand at gaze and dare not enter upon that course of life which themselves by a constant sentence judge to be the best and of the most considerable advantage But as the boy in the Apologue listned to the disputes of Labour and Idleness the one perswading him to rise the other to lie in bed but while he considered what to doe he still lay in bed and considered so these men dispute and argue for vertue and the service of God and stand beholding and admiring it but they stand on the other side while they behold it There is a strife between the law of the minde and the law of the members But this prevails over that For the case is thus There are in men three laws 1. The law of the members 2. The law of the minde 3. The law of the spirit 1. The law of the members that is the habit and proneness to sin the dominion of sin giving a law to the lower man reigning there as in its proper seat Col. 2.18 Rom. 8.7 This law is also called by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the minde of the flesh * Ab Hebr. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 anima sensitiva the wisdome the relish the gust and savour of the flesh that is that deliciousness and comport that inticing and correspondencies to the appetite by which it tempts and prevails all its own principles and propositions which minister to sin and folly This subjects the man to the law of sin or is that principle of evil by which sin does give us laws 2. To this law of the flesh the law of the minde * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Graec. Hebraeis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is oppos'd and is in the regenerate and unregenerate indifferently and it is nothing else but the conscience of good and evil subject to the law of God which the other cannot be This accuses and convinces the unregenerate it calls upon him to doe his duty it makes him unquiet when he does not but this alone is so invalidated by the infirmity of the flesh by the Oeconomy of the law by the disadvantages of the world that it cannot prevail or free him from the captivity of sin But 3. The law of the Spirit is the grace of Jesus Christ and this frees the man from the law of the members Rom. 8.2 from the captivity of sin from the tenure of death Here then are three Combatants the Flesh the Conscience the Spirit The flesh endevours to subject the man to the law of sin the other two endevour to subject him to the law of God The flesh and the conscience or minde contend but this contention is no signe of being regenerate because the Flesh prevails most commonly against the Minde where there is nothing else to help it the man is still a captive to the law of sin But the Minde being worsted God sends in the auxiliaries of the Spirit and when that enters and possesses that overcomes the flesh it rules and gives laws But as in the unregenerate the Minde did strive though it was overpower'd yet still it contended but ineffectively for the most part so now when the Spirit rules the flesh strives but it prevails but seldome it is overpowered by the Spirit Now this contention is a signe of regeneration when the flesh lusteth against the Spirit not when the flesh lusteth against the minde or conscience For the difference is very great and highly to be remark'd And it is represented in two places of S. Rom. 7.22 23. Pauls Epistles The one is that which I have already explicated in this Chapter I consent to the law of God according to the inner man But I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my minde and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin that is in my members where there is a redundancy in the words but the Apostle plainly signifies that the law of sin which is in his members prevails that is sin rules the man in despite of all the contention and reluctancy of his conscience or the law of his minde So that this strife of flesh and conscience is no signe of the regenerate because the minde of a man is in subordination to the flesh of the man sometimes willingly and perfectly sometimes unwillingly and imperfectly I deny not but the minde is sometimes called Spirit and by consequence improperly it may be said that even in these men their spirit lusteth against the flesh That is the more rational faculties contend against the brute parts reason against passion law against sin Thus the word Spirit is taken for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inner man the whole minde together with its affections Mat. 26.4 and Acts 19.21 But in this Question the word * Rom. 7.22 23 8.5 7 9. Spirit is distinguished from Minde and is taken for the minde renewed by the Spirit of God and as these words are distinguished so must their several contentions be remark'd For when the minde or conscience and the flesh fight the flesh prevails but when the Spirit and the flesh fight the Spirit prevails And by that we shall best know who are the litigants that like the two sons of Rebecca strive within us If the flesh prevails then there was in us nothing but the law of the minde nothing but the conscience of an unregenerate person I mean if the flesh prevails frequently or habitually But if the Spirit of God did rule us if that principle had possession of us then the flesh is crucified it is mortified it is killed and prevails not at all but when we will not use the force and arms of the Spirit but it does not prevail habitually not frequently or regularly or by observation This is clearly taught by those excellent words of S. Paul which as many other periods of his Epistles have had the ill luck to be very much misunderstood This I say then Gal. 5.16 17 18. walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh so that ye cannot that ye doe not or may not doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the things that ye would But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the law The word in the Greek may either signifie duty or event Walk in the Spirit and fulfil not or ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh If we understand it in the Imperative sense then it is exegetical of the former words He that walks in the Spirit hoc ipso does not fulfil
Spiritual and Evangelical that is not only that good which he is taught by natural reason or by civil sanctions or by use and experience of things but even that also which is onely taught us by the Spirit of grace For if he can desire the first much more may he desire the latter when he once comes to know it because there is in spiritual good things much more amability they are more perfective of our minde and a greater advancer of our hopes and a security to our greatest interest Neither can this be prejudic'd by those words of S. Paul 1 Cor. 2.24 The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned For the naturall man S. Paul speaks of is one unconverted to Christianity the Gentile Philosophers who relied upon such principles of nature as they understood but studied not the Prophets knew not of the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles nor of those excellent verifications of the things of the Spirit and therefore these men could not arrive at spiritual notices because they did not go that way which was the onely competent and proper instrument of finding them Scio incapacem te Sacramenti impie Prudent Non posse caecis mentibus mysterium Haurire nostrum They that are impious and they that go upon distinct principles neither obeying the proposition nor loving the Commandement they indeed viz. remaining in that indisposition cannot receive that is entertain him And this is also the sense of the words of our blessed Saviour Joh. 14 17. The world cannot receive him that is the unbeleevers such who will not be perswaded by arguments Evangelical But a man may be a spiritual man in his notices and yet be carnal in his affections and still under the bondage of sin 2 Pet. 2 21. Such are they of whom S. Peter affirms it is better they had never known the way of righteousness then having known it to fall away Such are they of whom S. Paul says Rom. 1.18 They detain the truth in unrighteousness Now concerning this man it is that I affirm that upon the same account as any vicious man can commend vertue this man also may commend holiness and desire to be a holy man and wishes it with all his heart there being the same proportion between his minde and the things of the Spirit as between a Jew and the Moral Law or a Gentile and Moral vertue that is he may desire it with passion and great wishings But here is the difference A regenerate man does what the unregenerate man does but desire 4. An unregenerate man may leave many sins which he is commanded to forsake For it is not ordinarily possible that so perfect a conviction as such men may have of the excellency of religion should be in all instances and periods totally ineffective Something they will give to reputation something to fancy something to fame something to peace something to their own deception that by quitting one or two lusts they may have some kinde of peace in all the rest and think all is well These men sometimes would fain obey the law but they will not crucify the flesh any thing that does not smart Their temper and constitution will allow them easily to quit such superinduc'd follies which out of a gay or an impertinent spirit they have contracted or which came to them by company or by chance or confidence or violence but if they must mortify the flesh to quit a lust that 's too hard and beyond their powers which are in captivity to the law of sin * Some men will commute a duty and if you will allow them covetousness they will quit their lust or their intemperance according as it happens Herod did many things at the preaching of John the Baptist and heard him gladly Balaum did some things handsomely though he was covetous and ambitious yet he had a limit he would obey the voyce of the Angel and could not be tempted to speak a curse when God spake a blessing Ahab was an imperfect penitent he did some things but not enough And if there be any root of bitterness there is no regeneration Colloquintida and Death is in the pot 5. An unregenerate man may leave some sins not onely for temporal interest but out of reverence of the Divine law out of fear and reverence Under the law there were many such and there is no peradventure but that many men who like Felix have trembled at a Sermon have with such a shaking fit left off something that was fit to be laid aside To leave a sin out of fear of the Divine judgement is not sinful or totally unacceptable All that lest sin in obedience and reverence to the law did it in fear of punishment because fear was the sanction of the law and even under the Gospel to obey out of fear of punishment though it be less perfect yet it is not criminal nay rather on the other side The worse that men are so much the less they are afraid of the Divine anger judgements To abstain out of fear is to abstain out of a very proper motive and God when he sends a judgement with a design of emendation or threatens a criminal or denounces woes and cursings intends that fear should be the beginning of wisdome Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord 2 Cor. 5.11 we perswade men saith S. Paul And the whole design of delivering criminals over to Satan was but a pursuance of this argument of fear that by feeling something they might fear a worse and for the present be affrighted from their sin And this was no other then the argument which our blessed Saviour used to the poor Paralytick Goe and sin no more lest a worse thing happen to thee But besides that this good fear may work much in an unregenerate person or a man under the law such a person may doe some things in obedience to God or thankfulness and perfect meer choice So Jehu obeyed God a great way but there was a turning and a high stile beyond which he would not goe and his principles could not carry him through Few women can accuse themselves of adultery in the great lines of chastity they choose to obey God and the voyce of honour but can they say that their eye is not wanton that they do not spend great portions of their time in vanity that they are not idle and useless or busy-bodies that they doe not make it much of their imployment to talk of fashions and trifles or that they do make it their business to practise religion to hear and attend to severe and sober counsels If they be under the conduct of the Spirit he hath certainly carried them into all the regions of duty But to goe a great way and not to nnish the journey is the imperfection of the unregenerate For in some persons fear
or love of God is not of it self strong enough to weigh down the scales but there must be thrown in something from without some generosity of spirit or revenge or gloriousness and bravery or natural pity or interest and so far as these or any of them go along with the better principle this will prevail but when it must goe alone it is not strong enough But this is a great way off from the state of sanctification or a new birth 6. An unregenerate man besides the abstinence from much evil may also do many good things for heaven and yet never come thither He may be sensible of his danger and sad condition and pray to be delivered from it and his prayers shall not be heard because he does not reduce his prayers to action and endevour to be what he desires to be Almost every man desires to be sav'd but this desire is not with every one of that perswasion and effect as to make them willing to want the pleasures of the world for it or to perform the labours of charity repentance A man may strive and contend in or towards the ways of godliness and yet fall short Many men pray often fast much and pay tithes do justice and keep the Commandements of the second Table with great integrity and so are good moral men as the word is used in opposition to or rather in destrution of religion Some are religious and not just some want sincerity in both and of this the Pharisees were a great example But the words of our blessed Saviour are the greatest testimony in this article Many shall strive to enter and shall not be able Luke 13.14 Either they shall contend too late like the five foolish Virgins and as they whom S. Paul by way of caution likens to Esau or else they contend with incompetent and insufficient strengths they strive but put not force enough to the work An unregenerate man hath not strengths enough that is he wants the spirit and activity and perfectness of resolution Not that he wants such aids as are necessary and sufficient but that himself hath not purposes pertinacious and resolutions strong enough All that is necessary to his assistance from without all that he hath or may have but that which is necessary on his own part he hath not but that 's his own fault that he might also have and it is in his duty and therefore certainly in his power to have it For a man is not capable of a law which he hath not powers sufficient to obey he must be free and quit from all its contraries from the power and dominion of them or at least must be so free that he may be quit of them if he please For there can be no liberty but where all the impediments are remov'd or may be if the man will 7. An unregenerate man may have received the Spirit of God and yet be in a state of distance from God For to have received the holy Ghost is not an inseparable propriety of the regenerate The Spirit of God is an internal agent that is the effects and graces of the Spirit by which we are assisted are within us before they operate For although all assistances from without are graces of God the effects of Christs passion purchased for us by his bloud and by his intercesson and all good company wise counsels apt notices prevailing arguments moving objects and opportunities and endearments of vertue are from above from the Father of lights yet the Spirit of God does also work more inwardly and creates in us aptnesses and inclinations consentings and the acts of conviction and adherence working in us to will and to doe according to our desire or according to Gods good pleasure yet this holy Spirit is oftentimes grieved sometimes provoked and at last extinguish'd which because it is done onely by them who are enemies of the Spirit and not the servants of God it follows that the Spirit of God by his aids and assistances is in them that are not so with a design to make them so and if the holy Spirit were not in any degree or sense in the unregenerate how could a man be born again by the Spirit for since no man can be regenerate by his own strengths his new birth must be wrought by the Spirit of God and especially in the beginnings of our conversion is his assistance necessary which assistance because it works within as well and rather then without must needs be in a man before he operates within And therefore to have received the holy Spirit is not the propriety of the regenerate but to be led by him to be conducted by the Spirit in all our wayes and counsels to obey his motions to entertain his doctrine to do his pleasure This is that which gives the distinction and the denomination Rom. 8.9 And this is called by S. Paul the inhabitation of the Spirit of God in us in opposition to the inhabitans peccatum the sin that dwelleth in the unregenerate The Spirit may be in us calling and urging us to holiness but unless the Spirit of God dwell in us and abide in us and love to doe so and rule and give us laws and be not griev'd and cast out but entertain'd and cherish'd and obey'd unless I say the Spirit of God be thus in us Christ is not in us and if Christ be not in us we are none of his § 6. The Character of the Regenerate estate or person FRom hence it is not hard to describe what are the proper indications of the Regenerate 1. A regenerate person is convinc'd of the goodness of the law and meditates in it day and night Psal 1.2 Psal 119.77 103. His delight is in Gods law not onely with his minde approving but with his will choosing the duties and significations of the law 2. The Regenerate not onely wishes that the good were done which God commands but heartily sets about the doing of it 3. He sometimes feels the rebellions of the flesh but he fights against them alwayes and if he receive a fall he rises instantly and fights the more fiercely and watches the more cautelously and prays the more passionately and arms himself more strongly and prevails more prosperously In a regenerate person there is flesh and Spirit but the Spirit onely rules There is an outward and an inward man but both of them are subject to the Spirit There was a law of the members but it is abrogated and cancell'd the law is repeal'd and does not any more inslave him to the law of sin Aug. l. de Contin c. 2. Nunc quamdiu concupiscit caro adversus spiritum spiritus adversus carnem sat est nobis non consentire malis quae sentimus in nobis Every good man shall alwayes feel the flesh lusting against the Spirit that contention he shall never be quit of but it is enough for us if we never consent
the throne of Grace For it is remarkable that Gods justice is in some cases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exact full and severe in other cases it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 full of equity gentleness and wisdome making abatement for infirmities performing promises interpreting things to the most equal and favourable purposes So Justice is taken in S. John If we confess our sins he is righteous or just to forgive our sins that is Gods justice is such as to be content with what we can doe and not to exact all that is possible to be imposed He is as just in forgiving the penitent as in punishing the refractary as just in abating reasonably as in weighing scrupulously such a justice it is which in the same case David cals Mercy For thou Lord art merciful for thou rewardest every man according to his works And if this were not so no man could be saved Lib. 6.13 Mortalis enim conditio non patitur esse hominem ab omni maculâ purum said Lactantius For in many things we offend all and our present state of imperfection will not suffer it to be otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 De agriculturâ said Philo. For as a runner of races at his first setting forth rids his way briskly and in a breath measures out many spaces but by and by his spirit is faint and his body is breathless and he stumbles at every thing that lies in his way so is the course of a Christian fierce in the beginnings of repentance and active in his purposes but in his progress remiss and hindred and starts at every accident and stumbles at every scandal and stone of offence and is sometimes listless and without observation at other times and a bird out of a bush that was not look'd for makes him to start aside and decline from the path and method of his journey But then if he that stumbles mends his pace and runs more warily and goes on vigorously his error or misfortune shall not be imputed for here Gods justice is equity it is the justice of the Chancery we are not judged by the Covenant of works that is of exact measures but by the Covenant of faith and remission or repentance But if he that fals lies down despairingly or wilfully or if he rises goes back or goes aside not onely his declination from his way but every error or fall every stumbling and startling in that way shall be accounted for For here Gods justice is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exact and severe it is the justice of the Law because he refused the method and conditions of the Gospel 5. Every sinful action that canpretend to pardon by being a sin of infirmity must be in a small matter The imperfect way of operating alone is not sufficient for excuse and pardon unless the matter also be little and contemptible because if the matter be great it cannot ordinarily be but it must be considered and chosen He that in a sudden anger strikes his friend to the heart whom he had lov'd as passionately as now he smote him is guilty of murder and cannot pretend infirmity for his excuse because in an action of so great consequence and effect it is supposed he had time to deliberate all the foregoing parts of his life whether such an action ought to be done or not or the very horror of the action was enough to arrest his spirit as a great danger or falling into a river will make a drunken man sober and by all the laws of God and Man he was immur'd from the probability of all transports into such violences and the man must needs be a slave of passion who could by it be brought to goe so far from reason and to doe so great evil * If a man in the careless time of the day when his spirit is loose with a less severe imployment or his heart made more open with an innocent refreshment spies a sudden beauty that unluckily strikes his fancy it is possible that he may be too ready to entertain a wanton thought and to suffer it to stand at the doors of his first consent but if the sin passes no further the man enters not into the regions of death because the Devil entred on a sudden and is as suddenly cast forth But if from the first arrest of concupiscence he pass on to an imperfect consent from an imperfect consent to a perfect and deliberate and from thence to an act and so to a habit he ends in death because long before it is come thus far The salt water is taken in The first concupiscence is but like rain water it discolours the pure springs but makes them not deadly But when in the progression the will mingles with it it is like the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or waters of brimstone and the current for ever after is unwholesome and carries you forth into the dead Sea the lake of Sodom which is to suffer the vengance of Eternal fire But then the matter may be supposed little till the will comes For though a man may be surprised with a wanton eye yet he cannot fight a duel against his knowledge or commit adultery against his will A man cannot against his will contrive the death of a man but he may speak a rash word or be suddenly angry or triflingly peevish and yet all this notwithstanding be a good man still These may be sins of Infirmity because they are imperfect actions in the whole and such in which as the man is for the present surpris'd so they are such against which no watchfulness was a sufficient guard as it ought to have been in any great matter and might have been in sudden murders A wise and a good man may easily be mistaken in a nice question but can never suspect an article of his Creed to be false a good man may have many fears and doubtings in matters of smaller moment but he never doubts of Gods goodness of his truth of his mercy or of any of his communicated perfections he may fall into melancholy and may suffer indefinite fears of he knows not what himself yet he can never explicitely doubt of any thing which God hath clearly revealed and in which he is sufficiently instructed A weak eye may at a distance mistake a man for a tree but he who sailing in a storm takes the Sea for dry land or a mushrome for an oak is stark blinde And so is he who can think adultery to be excusable or that Treason can be duty or that by persecuting Gods Prophets he does God good service or that he propagates religion by making the Ministers of the Altar poor and robbing the Churches A good man so remaining cannot suffer infirmity in the plain and legible lines of duty where he can see and reason and consider I have now told which are sins of infirmity and I have told all their measures For as for those other false opinions by which
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But where there is no knowledge there is no power and no choice and no sin They increase and decrease by each others meâ—sures Jam. 4.17 S. James his rule is the full measure of this discourse To him that knoweth to d ee good and doth iâ— not to him it is sin The same with that of Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To him that sins ignorantly pardon is given that is easily but he who sins knowingly hath no excuse And therefore the Hebrews use to oppose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sin to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ignorance that is the issues of a wicked from the issues of a weak minde according to that saying of our blessed Saviour John 10.41 If ye were blinde ye should have no sin that is no great or very unpardonable sin Ignorance where of it self it is no sin keeps the action innocent but as the principle is polluted so also is the emanation §. 8. Practical advices to be added to the foregoing considerations 1. SInce our weak nature is the original of our imperfections and sinful infirmities it is of great concernment that we treat our natures so as to make them aptly to minister to religion but not to vice Nature must be preserved as a servant but not indulged to as a Mistress for she is apt to be petulant and after the manner of women quae faciunt graviera coactae Imperio sexus she will insult impotently and rule tyrannically Natures provisions of meat and drink are to be retrench'd and moderate that she may not be luxuriant and irregular but yet she ought to be refreshed so as to be useful and healthful and chearful even in the days of expiation and sorrow For he that fasts to kill his lust and by fasting grows peevish which to very many men is a natural effect of fasting and was sadly experimented in S. Hierome hath onely altered the signification of his evil and it is not easily known whether the beast that is wanton or the beast that is curst be aptest to goar and if in such cases the first evil should be cured yet the man is not But there are in nature some things which are the instruments of vertue and vice too some things which of themselves indeed are culpable but yet such which doe minister to glorious events and such which as they are not easily corrigible so they are not safe to be done away A Gellius 19.12 17.15 Dabo maximae famae viros inter admiranda propositos quos si quis corrigit delet Sic enim vitia virtutibus immixta sunt ut illas secum tractura sint If the natural anger of some men be taken off you will also extinguish their courage or make them unfit for government Vice and vertue sometimes goe together in these cases that which we call vicious is in many degrees of it a natural infirmity and must be tempered as well as it can but it neither can nor indeed ought to be extinguished and therefore as we must take care that nature run not into extravagancies so for the unalterable portions of infirmity they ought to be the matter of humility and watchfulness but not of scruple and vexation However we must be careful that nature be not Gods enemy for if a vice be incorporated into our nature that is if our natural imperfections be chang'd into evil customes it is a threefold cord that is not easily broken it is a legion of Devils and not to be cast out without a mighty labour and all the arts and contentions of the Spirit of God 2. In prosecution of this propound to thy self as the great business of thy life to fight against the passions We see that sin is almost unavoidable to young men because passion seises upon their first years The days of our youth is the reign of passion and sin rides in triumph upon the wheels of desire which run infinitely when the boy drives the chariot But the religion of a Christian is an open war against passion and by the grace of meekness if we list to study and to acquire that hath plac'd us in the regions of safety 3. Be not uncertain in thy resolutions or in choosing thy state of life because all uncertainties of minde and vagabond resolutions leave a man in the tyranny of all his follies and infirmities every thing can transport him and he can be forc'd by every temptation and every fancy or new accident can ruine him He that is not resolv'd and constant is yet in a state of deliberation and that supposes contrary appetites to be yet in the ballance and sin to be as strong as grace But besides this there are in every state of life many little things to be overcome and objections to be master'd and proper infirmities adherent which are to be cured in the progression and growth of a man and after experiment had of that state of life in which we are ingaged but therefore it is necessary that we begin speedily lest we have no time to begin that work which ought in some measure to be finish'd before we die Dum quid sis dubitas jam potes esse nihil He that is uncertain what to doe shall never doe any thing well and there is no infirmity greater then that a man shall not be able to determine himself what he ought to doe 4. In contentions against sin and infirmities let your force and your care be applied to that part of the wall that is weakest and where it is most likely the enemy will assault thee and if he does that he will prevail If a lustful person should bend all his prayers and his observations against envy he hath cur'd nothing of his nature and infirmity Some lusts our temper or our interest will part withall but our infirmities are in those desires which are hardest to be master'd that is when after a long dispute and perpetual contention still there will abide some pertinacious string of an evil root when the lust will be apt upon all occasions to revert when every thing can give fire to it and every heat can make it stir that is the scene of our danger and ought to be of greatest warfare and observation 5. He that fights against that lust which is the evil spring of his proper infirmities must not do it by single instances but by a constant and universal mortal fight He that does single spights to a lust as he that opposes now and then a fasting day against carnality or some few alms against oppression or covetousness will finde that these single acts if nothing else be done can doe nothing but cousen him they are apt to perswade easy people that they have done what is in them to cure their infirmity and that their condition is good but it will not doe any thing of that work whither they are design'd We must remember that infirmities are but the reliques and remains of
be accepted and when I fail of that I may be pitied and pardoned and in all my fights and necessities may be defended and secured prospered and conducted to the regions of victory and triumph of strength and glory through the mercies of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus and the blessed communication of the Spirit of God and our Lord Jesus Amen CHAP. VIII Of the effect of Repentance viz. Remission of sins §. 1. THE law written in the Heart of man is a law of obedience which because we prevaricated we are taught another which S. Austin says is written in the Heart of Angels Lib. 6. cont Julian c. 9. Vt nulla sit iniquitas impunita nisi quam sanguis Mediatoris expiaverit For God the Father spares no sinner but while he looks upon the face of his Son but that in him our sins should be pardon'd and our persons spared is as necessary a consideration as any S. Ambr. de poenit l. 1. c. 2. Nemo enim potest benè agere poenitentiam nisi qui speraverit indulgentiam To what purpose does God call us to Repentance if at the same time he does not invite us to pardon It is the state and misery of the damned to repent without hope and if this also could be the state of the penitent in this life the Sermons of Repentance were useless and comfortless Gods mercies were none at all to sinners the institution and office of preaching and reconciling penitents were impertinent and man should die by the laws of Angels who never was enabled to live by their strength and measures and consequently all mankinde were infinitely and eternally miserable lost irrecoverably perishing without a Saviour tied to a law too hard for him and condemned by unequal and intolerable sentences Tertullian considering that God threatens all impenitent sinners Lib. 2. de poenit argues demonstratively Neque enim comminaretur non poenitenti si non ignosceret delinquenti If men repent not God will be severely angry it will be infinitely the worse for us if we doe not and shall it be so too if we doe repent God forbid Frustra mortuus est Christus si aliquos vivificare non potest S. Hierom. Epist ad Ocean Mentitur Johannes Baptista digito Christum voce demonstrans Ecce agnus Dei ecce qui tollit peccata mundi si sunt adhuc in saeculo quorum Christus peccata non tulerit In vain did Christ die if he cannot give life to all And the Baptist deceiv'd us when he pointed out Christ unto us saying Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world if there were any in the world whose sins Christ hath not born But God by the old Prophets called upon them who were under the Covenant of Works in open appearance Exod. 34.6 Psa 103. per totum 128. Isa 55.7 8. Jer. 18.7 8. Ezek. 18.21 22. 33.11 Dan. 4.27 Mal. 3.7 Joel 2.13 Jonah 4.2 3.9 that they also should repent and by antedating the mercies of the Gospel promised pardon to the penitent He promised mercy by Moses and the Prophets He proclaimed his Name to be Mercy and Forgiveness He did solemnly swear he did not desire the death of a sinner but that he should repent and live and the holy Spirit of God haâ—â— respersed every book of holy Scripture with great and legible lines of mercy and sermons of Repentance In short it was the summe of all the Sermons which were made by those whom God sent with his word in their mouthes that they should live innocently or when they had sinned they should repent and be sav'd from their calamity But when Christ came into the world he open'd the fountains of mercy and broke down all the banks of restraint he preach'd Repentance offer'd health gave life call'd all wearied and burthen'd persons to come to him for ease and remedy he glorified his Fathers mercies and himself became the great instrument and channel of its emanation He preach'd and commanded mercy by the example of God he made his Religion that he taught to be wholly made up of doing and receiving good this by Faith that by Charity He commanded an indefinite and unlimited forgiveness of our brother repenting after injuries done to us seventy times seven times and though there could be little quostion of that yet he was pleased to signifie to us that as we needed more so we should have and finde more mercy at the hands of God And therefore he hath appointed a whole order of men whom he maintains at his own charges and furnishes with especial commissions Mat. 1â— 15 16. Joh. 20.23 2 Cor. 7.10 Gal. 6.1 Jam. 1.15 16 19 20. 1 Joh. 2.11 1.9 Rev. 2.5 3.1 2 3 19 20. and endues with a lasting power and imployes on his own errand and instructs with his own Spirit whose business is to remit and retain to exhort and to restore sinners by the means of Repentance and the word of their proper Ministery Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted that 's their Authority and their Office is to pray all men in Christs stead to be reconciled to God And after all this Christ himself labours to bring it to effect not onely assisting his Ministers with the gifts of an excellent Spirit and exacting of them the account of Souls but that it may be prosperous and effectual himself intercedes in Heaven before the Throne of Grace doing for sinners the office of an Advocate and a Reconciler If any man sins 1 Joh. 2.2 3. we have an Advocate with the Father and he is the propitiation for all our sins and for the sins of the whole world and therefore it is not onely the matter of our hopes but an Article of our Creed that we may have forgiveness of our sins by the blood of Jesus Qui nullum excepit in Christo donavit omnia God hath excepted none and therefore in Christ pardons all For there is not in Scripture any Catalogue of sins set down for which Christ died and others excluded from that state of mercy All that believe and repent shall be pardon'd if they go and sin no more Deus distinctionem non facit qui misericordiam suam promisit omnibus relaxandi licentiam sacerdotibus suis sine ullâ exceptione concessit Lib. 1. de poenit c. 2. said S. Ambrose God excepts none but hath given power to his Ministers to release all absolutely all And S. Bernard argues this Article upon the account of those excellent examples which the Spirit of God hath consign'd to us in holy Scripture If Peter after so great a fall did arrive to such an eminence of sanctity In solenni Petri Pauli Ser. 3. hereafter who shall despair provided that he will depart from his sins For that God is ready to forgive the greatest Criminals if they repent appears in the instances of Ahab and
his servant Moses It is called sinning with a high hand that is with an hand lift up on high against God Corah and his Company committed the sin against the Holy Spirit for they spake against that Spirit and power which God had put into Moses and prov'd by the demonstration of mighty effects It is a denying that great argument of Credibility by which God goes about to verifie any mission of his to prove by mighty effects of Gods Spirit that God hath sent such a man When God manifests his holy Spirit by signs and wonders extraordinary not to revere this good Spirit not to confess him but to revile him or to reproach the power is that which God ever did highly punish Thus it happened to Pharoah he also sinn'd against the Holy Ghost the good Spirit of God for when his Magicians told him that the finger of God was there yet he hardned his heart against it and then God went on to harden it more till he overthrew him for then his sin became unpardonable in the sense I shall hereafter explicate And this pass'd into a law to the children of Israel and they were warned of it with the highest threatning that is of a capital punishment The soul that doeth ought presumptuously or with an high hand the same reproacheth the Lord Num. 15.30 that soul shall be cut off from among his people and this is translated into the New Testament They that doe despite to the Spirit of Grace shall fall into the hands of the living God That 's the sin against the Holy Ghost Now this sin must in all reason be very much greater under the Gospel then under the Law For when Christ came he did such miracles which never any man did and preach'd a better law and with mighty demonstrations of the Spirit that is of the power and Spirit of God prov'd himself to have come from God and therefore men were more convinc'd and he that was so and yet would oppose the Spirit that is defie all his proofs and hear none of his words and obey none of his laws and at last revile him too he had done the great sin for this is to doe the worst thing we can we dishonour God in that in which he intended most to glorifie himself Two instances of this we finde in the New Testament though not of the highest degree yet because done directly against the Spirit of God that is in despite or in disparagement of that Spirit by which so great things were wrought it grew intolerable Ananias did not revere the Spirit of God so mightily appearing in S. Peter and the other Apostles and he was smitten and died Simon Magus took the Spirit of God for a vendible commodity for a thing less then money and fit to serve secular ends and he instantly fell into the gall of bitterness that is a sad bitter calamity and S. Peter knew not whether God would forgive him or no. But it is remarkable that the holy Scriptures note various degrees of this malignity grieving the holy Spirit resisting him quenching him doing despite to him all sin against the Holy Ghost but yet they that had done so were all called to repentance S. Stephens Sermon was an instance of it and so was S. Peters and so was the prayer of Christ upon the Cross for the malicious Jews the Pharisees his betrayers and murtherers But the sin it self is of an indefinite progression and hath not physical limits and a certain constitution as is observable in carnal crimes Theft Murther or Adultery for though even these are increased by circumstances and an inward consent and degrees of love and adhesion yet of the crime it self we can say this is Murther and this is Adultery and therefore the punishment is proper and certain But since there are so many degrees of the sin against the Holy Ghost and it consists not in an indivisible point but according to the nature of internal and spiritual sins it is like time or numbers of a moveable being of a flux unstable immense constitution and may be alwayes growing not onely by the repetition of acts but by its proper essential increment and since in the particular case the measures are uncertain the nature secret the definition disputable and so many sins are like it or reducible to it apt to produce despair in timorous consciences and to discourage Repentance in lapsed persons it will be an intolerable proposition that affirms the sin against the Holy Ghost to be absolutely unpardonable That the sin against the Holy Ghost is pardonable appears in the instance of the Pharisees to whom even after they had committed the sin God was pleased to afford preaching signs and miracles and Christ upon the Cross prayed for them but in what sense also it was unpardonable appears in their case for they were so far gone that they would not return and God did not and at last would not pardon them For this appellative is not properly subjected nor attributed to the sin it self but it is according as the man is The sin may be and is at some time unpardonable yet not in all its measures and parts of progression as appears in the case of Pharaoh who all the way from the first miracle to the tenth sinn'd against the Holy Ghost but at last he was so bad that God would not pardon him Some men are come to the greatness of the sin or to that state and grandeur of impiety that their estate is desperate that is though the nature of their sins is such as God is extremely angry with them and would destroy them utterly were he not restrain'd by an infinite mercy yet it shall not be thus for ever for in some state of circumstances and degrees God is finally angry with the man and will never return to him Untill things be come to this height whatsoever the sin be it is pardonable For if there were any one sin distinguishable in its whole nature and instance from others which in every of its periods were unpardonable it is most certain it would have been described in Scripture with clear characters and cautions that a man might know when he is in and when he is out Speaking a word against the Holy Spirit is by our blessed Saviour called this great sin but it is certain that every word spoken against him is not unpardonable Simon Magus spoke a foul word against him but S. Peter did not say it was unpardonable but when he bid him pray he consequently bid him hope but because he would not warrant him that is durst not absolve him he sufficiently declared that this sin is of an indefinite nature and by growth would arrive at the unpardonable state the state and fulness of it is unpardonable that is God will to some men and in some times and stages of their evil life be so angry that he will give them over and leave them in their reprobate minde But no
man knowes when that time is God only knowes and the event must declare it But for the thing it self that it is pardonable is very certain because it may be pardoned in baptisme The Novatians denied not to baptisme a power of pardoning any sin in this sense it is without doubt true what Zosimus by way of reproach objected to Christian religion it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a deletery and purgative for every sin whatsoever And since the unconverted Pharisees were guilty of this sin and it was a sin forbidden and punished capitally in the law of Moses either to these Christ could not have been preached and for them Christ did not die or else it is certain that the sin against the holy Spirit of God is pardonable Now whereas our B. Lord affirmed of this sin it shall not be pardoned in this world nor in the world to come we may best understand the meaning of it by the parallel words of old Heli to his sons If a man sin against another 1 Sam. 2 25. the Judge shall judge him placari ei potest Deus so the vulgar latine reads it God may be appeased that is it shall be forgiven him that is a word spoken against the Son of man which relates to Christ only upon the account of his humane nature that may be forgiven him it shall that is upon easier terms as upon a temporal judgment called in this place a being judged by the Judge But if a man sin against the Lord who shall intreat for him that is if he sin with a high hand presumptuously against the Lord against his power and his Spirit who shall intreat for him it shall never be pardoned never so as the other never upon a temporal judgement that cannot expiate this great sin as it could take off a sin against a man or the Son of man for though it be punished here it shall be punished hereafter But 2. It shall not be pardoned in this world nor in the world to come that is neither to the Jewes nor to the Gentiles For Saeculum hoc this World in Scripture is the period of the Jewes Synagogue and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the world to come is taken for the Gospel or the age of the Messias frequently among the Jews and it is not unlikely Christ might mean it in that sense which was used amongst them by whom he would be understood But because the word was also as commonly used in that sense in which it is understood at this day viz. for the world after this life I shall therefore propound another exposition which seems to me more probable Though remission of sins is more plentiful in the Gospel then under the Law yet because the sin is bigger under the Gospel there is not here any ordinary way of pardoning it no Ministery established to warrant or absolve such sinners but it must be referred to God himself and yet that 's not all For if a man perseveres in this sin he shall neither be forgiven here nor hereafter that is neither can he be absolved in this world by the ministery of the Church nor in the world to come by the sentence of Christ and this I take to be the full meaning of this so difficult place For in this world properly so speaking there is no forgivenesse of sins but what is by the ministery of the Church For then a sin is forgiven when it is pardon'd in the day of sentence or execution that is when those evils are removed which are usually inflicted or which are proper to that day Now then for the final punishment that is not till the day of judgement and if God then gives us a mercy in that day then is the day of our pardon from him In the mean time if he be gracious to us here he either forbears to smite us or smites us to bring us to repentance and all the way continues to us the use of the Word and Sacraments that is if he does in any sense pardon us here if he does not give us over to a reprobate minde he continues us under the means of salvation which is the ministery of the Church for that 's the way of pardon in this * vide infrà numb 66. World as the blessed sentence of the right hand is the way of pardon in the World to come So that when our great Lord and Master threatens to this sin it shall not be pardon'd in this World nor in the World to come he means that neither shall the Ministers of the Church pronounce his pardon or comfort his sorrowes or restore him after his fall or warrant his condition or pray for him publickly or give him the peace and communion of the Church neither will God pardon him in the day of Judgement But all this fearful denunciation of the Divine judgement is only upon supposition the man does not repent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said S. Athanasius Quaest 71. to 2. God did not say to him that blasphemes and repents it shall not be forgiven but to him that blasphemes and remains in his blasphemy for there is no sin which God will not pardon to them that holily and worthily repent S. Chrys in 1 Cor hom 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To be wounded is not so grievous but it is intolerable when the wounded man refuses to be cured For it is considerable Whoever can repent may hope for pardon else he could not be invited to repentance I do not say whoever can be sorrowfull may hope for pardon for there is a sorrow too late then commencing when there is no time left to begin much lesse to finish 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Athanasius calls it a holy and a worthy repentance and of such Philo affirmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in allegor◠Some unhappy soules would fain he admitted to repentance but God permits them not that is their time is past and either they die before they can performe it or if they live they return to their old impieties like water from a rock But whoever can repent worthily and leave their sin and mortify it and make such amends as is required these men ought not to despair of pardon they may hope for mercy and if they may hope they must hope for not to do it were the greatest crime of despair For despair is no sin but where to hope is a duty But if this be all then the sin against the holy Ghost hath no more said against it then any other sin for if we repent not of theft or adultery it shall neither be forgiven us in this world nor in the world to come and if we do repent of the sin against the holy Ghost it shall not be exacted of us but shall be pardoned So that to say it is unpardonable without repentance is to say nothing peculiar of this To this I answer that pardonable and unpardonable have no definite
time nothing hinders but that every sin is pardonable to him that repents But thus we finde that the style of Scripture and the expressions of holy persons is otherwise in the threatning and the edict otherwise in the accidents of persons and practise It is necessary that it be severe when duty is demanded but of lapsed persons it uses not to be exacted in the same dialect It is as all laws are In the general they are decretory in the use and application they are easier In the Sanction they are absolute and infinite but yet capable of interpretations of dispensations and relaxation in particular cases And so it is in the present Article Impossible and Vnpardonable and Damnation and shall be cut off and nothing remains but fearful expectation of judgement are exterminating words and phrases in the law but they doe not effect all that they there signifie to any but the impenitent according to the saying of Mark the Hermite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No man is ever justified but he that carefully repents and no man is condemned but he that despises repentance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said S. Basil The eye of God who is so great a lover of souls cannot deny the intercessions and letanies of Repentance §. 6. The former Doctrines reduc'd to Practise 1. Although the doors of Repentance open to them that sin after Baptism and to them that sin after Repentance yet every relapse does increase the danger and make the sin to be less pardonable then before For 1. A good man falling into sin does it without all necessity he hath assistances great enough to make him conqueror he hath reason enough to disswade him he hath sharp senses of the filthiness of sin his spirit is tender and is crush'd with the uneasie load he sighs and wakes and is troubled and distracted and if he sins he sins with pain and shame and smart and the less of mistake there is in his case the more of malice is ingredient and a greater anger is like to be his portion 2. It is a particular unthankfulness when a man that was once pardon'd shall relapse And when obliged persons prove enemies they are ever the most malicious as having nothing to protect or cover their shame but impudence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So did the Greeks treat Agamemnon ill because he used them but too well Such persons are like Travellers who in a storm running to a fig-tree when the storm is over they beat the branches and pluck the fruit and having run to an altar for sanctuary they steal the Chalice from the holy place and rob the Temple that secur'd them And God does more resent it that the Lambs which he feeds at his own table which are as so many sons and daughters to him that daily suck plenty from his two breasts of Mercy and Providence that they should in his own house make a mutiny and put on the fierceness of wolves and rise up against their Lord and Shepherd 3. Every relapse after repentance is directly and in its proper principle a greater sin Our first faults are pitiable and we doe pati humanum we do after the manner of men but when we are recovered and then die again we doe facere Diabolicum we do after the manner of Devils For from ignorance to sin from passion and youthful appetites to sin from violent temptations and little strengths to fall into sin is no very great change it is from a corrupted nature to corrupted manners But from grace to return to sin from knowledge and experience and delight in goodnesse and wise notices from God and his Christ to return to sin to foolish actions and non-sense principles is a change great as was the fall of the morning stars when they descended cheaply and foolishly into darkness Well therefore may it be pitied in a childe to choose a bright dagger before a warm coat but when he hath been refreshed by this and smarted by that if he chooses again he will choose better But men that have tried both states that have rejoyced for their deliverance from temptation men that have given thanks to God for their safety and innocence men that have been wearied and ashamed of the follies of sin that have weighed both sides and have given wise sentence for God and for religion if they shall choose again and choose amiss it must be by something by which Lucifer did in the face of God choose to defie him and desire to turn Devil and be miserable and wicked for ever and ever 4. If a man repents of his repentances and returns to his sins all his intermedial repentance shall stand for nothing the sins which were marked for pardon shall break out in guilt and be exacted of him in fearful punishments as if he never had repented For if good works crucified by sins are made alive by repentance by the same reason those sins also will live again if the repentance dies it being equally just that if the man repents of his repentance God also should repent of his pardon For we must observe carefully that there is a pardon of sins proper to this life and another proper to the world to come Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted and what ye binde on earth shall be bound in heaven Vid. suprà Num. 53. That is there are two remissions One here the other hereafter That here is wrought by the Ministery of the Word and Sacraments by faith and obedience by moral instruments and the divine grace all which are divisible and gradual and grow or diminish ebbe or flow change or persist and consequently grow on to effect or else fail of the grace of God that final grace which alone is effective of that benefit which we here contend for Here in proper speaking our pardon is but a disposition towards the great and final pardon a possibility and ability to pursue that interest to contend for that absolution and accordingly it is wrought by parts and is signified and promoted by every act of grace that puts us in order to heaven or the state of final pardon God gives us one degree of pardon when he forbears to kill us in the act of sin when he admits when he calls when he smites us into repentance when he invites us by mercies and promises when he abates or defers his anger when he sweetly engages us in the wayes of holiness these are several parts and steps of pardon For if God were extremely angry with us as we deserve nothing of all this would be done unto us and still Gods favours increase and the degrees of pardon multiply as our endevours are prosperous as we apply our selves to religion and holiness and make use of the benefits of the Church the ministery of the Word and Sacraments and as our resolutions passe into acts and habits of vertue But then in this world we are to expect no other pardon but a fluctuating alterable
and heart But if thou canst know thy self you need not enquire any further If thy duty be performed you may be secure of all that is on Gods part 5. When ever repentance begins know that from thence-forward the sinner begins to live but then never let that repentance die Doe not at any time say I have repented of such a sin and am at peace for that for a man ought never to be at peace with sin nor think that any thing we can doe is too much Our repentance for sin is never to be at an end till faith it self shall be no more for Faith and Repentance are but the same Covenant and so long as the just does live by faith in the Son of God so long he lives by repentance for by that faith in him our sins are pardoned that is by becoming his Disciples we enter into the Covenant of Repentance And he undervalues his sin and overvalues his sorrow who at any time fears he shall doe too much or make his pardon too secure and therefore sets him down and sayes Now I have repented 6. Let no man ever say he hath committed the sin against the Holy Ghost or the unpardonable sin for there are but few that doe that and he can best confute himself if he can but tell that he is sorrowful for it and begs for pardon and hopes for it and desires to make amends this man hath already obtained some degrees of pardon and S. Pauls argument in this case also is a demonstration If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son Rom. 5.10 much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life That is if God to enemies gives the first grace much more will he give the second if they make use of the first For from none to a little is an infinite distance but from a little to a great deal is not so much And therefore since God hath given us means of pardon and the grace of Repentance we may certainly expect the fruit of pardon for it is a greater thing to give repentance to a sinner then to give pardon to the penitent Whoever repents hath not committed the great sin the Unpardonable For it is long of the man not of the sin that any sin is unpardonable 7. Let every man be careful of entring into any great states of sin lest he be unawares guilty of the great offence Every resisting of a holy motion calling us from sin every act against a clear reason or revelation every confident progression in sin every resolution to commit a sin in despite of conscience is an access towards the great sin or state of evil Therefore concerning such a man let others fear since he will not and save him with fear plucking him out of the fire but when he begins to return that great fear is over in many degrees for even in Moses law there were expiations appointed not onely for errour but for presumptuous sins The PRAYER I. OEternal God gracious and merciful I adore the immensity and deepest abysse of thy Mercy and Wisdome that thou doest pity our infirmities instruct our ignorances pass by thousands of our follies invitest us to repentance and doest offer pardon because we are miserable and because we need it and because thou art good and delightest in shewing mercy Blessed be thy holy Name and blessed be that infinite Mercy which issues forth from the fountains of our Saviour to refresh our weariness and to water our stony hearts and to cleanse our polluted souls O cause that these thy mercies may not run in vain but may redeem my lost soul and recover thy own inheritance and sanctifie thy portion the heart of thy servant and all my faculties II. BLessed Jesus thou becamest a little lower then the Angels but thou didst make us greater doing that for us which thou didst not doe for them Thou didst not pay for them one drop of bloud nor endure one stripe to recover the fallen stars nor give one groan to snatch the accursed spirits from their fearful prisons but thou didst empty all thy veins for me and gavest thy heart to redeem me from innumerable sins and an intolerable calamity O my God let all this heap of excellencies and glorious mercies be effective upon thy servant and work in me a sorrow for my sins and a perfect hatred of them a watchfulness against temptations severe and holy resolutions active and effective of my duty O let me never fall from sin to sin nor persevere in any nor love any thing which thou hatest but give me thy holy Spirit to conduct and rule me for ever and make me obedient to thy good Spirit never to grieve him never to resist him never to quench him Keep me O Lord with thy mighty power from falling into presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me so shall I be innocent from the great offence Let me never despair of thy mercies by reason of my sins nor neglect my repentance by reason of thy insinite loving kindness but let thy goodness bring me and all sinners to repentance and thy mercies give us pardon and thy holy Spirit give us perseverance and thy infinite favour bring us to glory through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen CHAP. IX Of Ecclesiasticall Penance or The fruits of Repentance §. 1. THe fruits of Repentance are the actions of spiritual life and signifie properly all that piety and obedience which we pay to God in the dayes of our return after we have begun to follow sober counsels For since all the duty of a Christian is a state of Repentance that is of contention against sin and the parts and proper periods of victory and Repentance which includes the faith of a Christian is but another word to express the same grace or mercies of the Evangelical Covenant it follows that whatsoever is the duty of a Christian and a means to possess that grace is in some sense or other a Repentance or the fruits of Gods mercy and our endevours And in this sense S. John the Baptist means it saying Bring forth therefore fruits meet for Repentance that is since now the great expectation of the world is to be satisfied and the Lords Christ will open the gates of mercy and give Repentance to the world see that ye live accordingly in the faith and obedience of God through Jesus Christ That did in the event of things prove to be the effect of that Sermon But although all the parts of holy life are fruits of Repentance when it is taken for the state of favor published by the Gospel yet when Repentance is a particular duty or vertue the integral parts of holy life are also constituent parts of Repentance and then by the fruits of Repentance must be meant the less necessary but very useful effects and ministeries of Repentance which are significations and exercises of the main duty And these are sorrow for sins
progression and is increased into a habit of piety sorrow and sensitive trouble may come in upon another account for great and permanent changes of the minde make great impressions upon the lower man When we love an object intensely our very body receives comfort in the presence of it and there are friendly Spirits which have a natural kindness and cognation to each other and refresh one another passing from eye to eye from friend to friend and the Prophet David felt it in the matter of Religion My flesh and my heart rejoyce in the living Lord. For if a grief of minde is a consumption of the flesh and a cheerful spirit is a conservatory of health it is certain that every great impression that is made upon the minde and dwells there hath its effect upon the body and the lower affections And therefore all those excellent penitents who consider the baseness of sin * their own danger though now past in some degrees * the offence of God * the secret counsels of his Mercy * his various manners of dispensing them * the fearful judgements which God unexpectedly sends upon some men * the dangers of our own confidence * the weakness of our Repentance * the remains of our sin * the aptnesses and combustible nature of our Concupiscence * the presence of temptation and the perils of relapsing * the evil state of things which our former sins leave us in * our difficulty in obeying and our longings to return to Egypt * and the fearful anger of God which will with greater fierceness descend if we chance to fall back Those penitents I say who consider these things frequently and prudently will finde their whole man so wrought upon that every faculty shall have an enmity against sin and therefore even the affections of the lower man must in their way contribute to its mortification and that is by a real and effective sorrow But in this whole affair the whole matter of question will be in the manner of operation or signification of the dislike For the duty is done if the sin be accounted an enemy that is whether the dislike be onely in the intellectual and rational appetite or also in the sensitive For although men use so to speak and distinguish superior from inferior appetites yet it will be hard in nature to finde any real distinct faculties in which those passions are subjected and from which they have emanation The intellectual desire and the sensual desire are both founded in the same faculty they are not distinguished by their subjects but by their objects only they are but several motions of the will to or from several objects When a man desires that which is most reasonable and perfective or consonant to the understanding that we call an intellectual or rational appetite but if he desires a thing that will doe him hurt in his soul or to his best interest and yet he desires it because it pleases him this is fit to be called a sensitive appetite because the object is sensitive and it is chosen for a sensual reason But it is rather appetitio then appetiâ—us that is an act rather then a principle of action The case is plainer if we take two objects of several interests both of which are proportion'd to the understanding S. Anthony in the desert and S. Bernard in the Pulpit were tempted by the spirit of pride they resisted and overcame it because pride was unreasonable and foolish as to themselves and displeasing to God If they had listned to the whispers of that spirit it had been upon the accounts of pleasure because pride is that deliciousness of spirit which entertains a vain man making him to delight in his own images and reflexions and therefore is a work of the flesh but yet plainly founded in the understanding And therefore here it is plain that when the flesh and the spirit fight it is not a fight between two faculties of the soul but a contest in the soul concerning the election of two objects It is no otherwise in this then in every deliberation when arguments from several interests contest each other Every passion of the man is nothing else but a proper manner of being affected with an object and consequently a tendency to or an aversion from it that is a willing or a nilling of it which willing and nilling when they produce several permament impressions upon the minde and body receive the names of divers passions The object it self first striking the fancy or lower apprehensions by its proper energy makes the first passion or tendency to the will that is the inclination or first concupiscence but when the will upon that impression is set on work and chooses the sensual object that makes the abiding passion the quality As if the object be displeasing and yet not present it effects fear or hatred if good and not present it is called desire but all these diversifications are meerly natural effects as to be warm is before the fire and cannot be in our choice directly and immediately That which is the prime and proper action of the will that onely is subject to a command that is to choose or refuse the sin The passion that is the proper effect or impress upon the fancy or body that is natural and is determin'd to the particular by the mixture of something natural with the act of the will as if an apprehension of future evils be mingled with the refusing sin that is if it be the cause of it then fear is the passion that is effected by it If the feeling some evil be the cause of the nolition then sorrow is the effect and fear also may produce sorrow So that the passion that is the natural impress upon the man cannot be the effect of a Commandement but the principle of that passion is we are commanded to refuse sin to eschew evil that 's the word of the Scripture but because we usually doe feel the evils of sin and we have reason to fear worse and sorrow is the natural effect of such a feeling and such a fear therefore the Scripture calling us to repentance that is a new life a dying unto sin and a living unto righteousness expresses it by sorrow and mourning and weeping but these are not the duty but the expressions or the instruments of that which is a duty So that if any man who hates sin and leaves it cannot yet finde the sharpness of such a sorrow as he feels in other sad accidents there can nothing be said to it but that the duty it self is not clothed with those circumstances which are apt to produce that passion it is not an eschewing of sin upon considerations of a present or a feared trouble but upon some other principle or that the consideration is not deep and pressing or that the person is of an unapt disposition to those sensible effects The Italian and his wife who by chance espied a Serpent under the
shade of their Vines were both equal haters of the little beast but the wife only cried out and the man kill'd it but with as great a regret and horror at the sight of it as his wife though he did not so express it But when a little after they espied a Lizard and she cried again he told her That he perceiv'd her trouble was not alwayes deriv'd from reasonable apprehensions and that what could spring onely from images of things and fancies of persons was not considerable by a just value This is the case of our sorrowing Some express it by tears some by penances and corporal inflictions some by more effective and material mortifications of it but he that kills it is the greatest enemy But those persons who can be sorrowful and violently mov'd for a trifling interest and upon the arrests of fancy if they finde these easie meltings and sensitive afflictions upon the accounts of their sins are not to please themselves at all unless when they have cried out they also kill the Serpent I cannot therefore at all suspect that mans repentance who hates sin and chooses righteousness and walks in it though he doe not weep or feel the troubles of a mother mourning over the hearse of her onely son but yet such a sensitive grief is of great use to these purposes 1. If it do not proceed from the present sense of the Divine judgement yet it supplies that and feels an evil from its own apprehension which is not yet felt from the Divine infliction 2. It prevents Gods anger by being a punishment of our selves a condemnation of the sinner and a taking vengeance of our selves for our having offended God And therefore it is consequently to this agreed on all hands that the greater the sorrow is the less necessity there is of any outward affliction Vt possit lachrymis aequare labores Virg. According to the old rule of the Penitentiaries Sitque modus culpae justae moderatio poenae Quae tanto levior quanto contritio major Which general measure of repentances as it is of use in the particular of which I am now discoursing so it effects this perswasion that external mortifications and austerities are not any part of original and essential duty but significations of the inward repentance unto men and suppletories of it before God that when we cannot feel the trouble of minde we may at least hate sin upon another account even upon the superinduc'd evils upon our bodies for all affliction is nothing but sorrow Gravis animi poena est quem post factum poenitet said Publius To repent is a grievous punishment and the old man in the Comedy cals it so Cur meam senectam hujus sollicito amentiâ Pro hujus egout peccatis supplicium sufferam Andriâ Why doe I grieve my old age for his madness that I should suffer punishment for his sins grieving was his punishment 3. This sensitive sorrow is very apt to extinguish sin it being of a symbolical nature to the design of God when he strikes a sinner for his amendment it makes sin to be uneasy to him and not onely to be displeasing to his spirit but to his sense and consequently that it hath no port to enter any more 4. It is a great satisfaction to an inquisitive conscience to whom it is not sufficient that he does repent unless he be able to prove it by signs and proper indications The sum is this No man can in any sense be said to be a true penitent unless he wishes he had never done the sin 2. But he that is told that his sin is presently pardon'd upon repentance that is upon leaving it and asking forgiveness and that the former pleasure shall not now hurt him he hath no reason to wish that he had never done it 3. But to make it reasonable to wish that the sin had never been done there must be the feeling or fear of some evil Conscia mens ut cuique sua est ita concipit intra Pectora pro meritiis spémque metúmque suis 4. According as is the nature of that evil fear'd or felt so is the passion effected of hatred or sorrow 5. Whatever the passion be it must be totally exclusive of all affection to sin and produce enmity and fighting against it until it be mortified 6. In the whole progression of this mortification it is more then probable that some degrees of sensitive trouble will come in at some angle or other 7. Though the duty of penitential sorrow it self be completed in nolitione peccati in the hating of sin and our selves for doing it yet the more penal that hate is the more it ministers to many excellent purposes of repentance But because some persons doe not feel this sensitive sorrow they begin to suspect their repentance and therefore they are taught to supply this want by a reflex act that is to be sorrowful because they are not sorrowful This I must needs say is a fine device where it can be made to signify something that is material But I fear it will not often For how can a man be sorrowful for not being sorrowful For either he hath reason at first to be sorrowful or he hath not If he hath not why should he be sorrowful for not doing an unreasonable act If he hath reason and knows it it is certain he will be as sorrowful as that cause so apprehended can effect but he can be no more and so much he cannot choose but be But if there be cause to be sorrowful and the man knows it not then he cannot yet grieve for that for he knows no cause and that is all one as if he had none But if there be indeed a cause which he hath not considered then let him be called upon to consider that and then he will be directly and truly sorrowful when he hath considered it and hath reason to be sorrowful because he had not considered it before that is because he had not repented sooner but to be sorrowful because he is not sorrowful can have no other good meaning but this We are to endevour to be displeased at sin and to use all the means we can to hate it that is when we finde not any sensitive sorrow or pungency of spirit let us contend to make our intellectual sorrow as great as we can And if we perceive or suspect we have not true repentance let us beg of God to give it and let us use the proper means of obtaining the grace and if we are uncertain concerning the actions of our own heart let us supply them by prayer and holy desires that if we cannot perceive the grace in the proper shape and by its own symptoms and indications we may be made in some measure humbly confident by other images and reflexions by seeing the grace in another shape so David Conoupivi desiderare justificationes tuas I have desired to desire thy justifications that
the memory of the shame which began when the sin was acted and abode but as a handmaid of the guilt and goes away with it Confession of sins opens them to man but draws a vail before them that God will the less behold them And it is a material consideration that if a man be impatient of the shame here when it is revealed but to one man who is also by all the ties of Religion by common Honesty oblig'd to conceal them or if he account it intolerable that a sin publick in the scandal and the infamy should be made publick by solemnity to punish and to extinguish it the man will be no gainer by refusing to confess when he shall remember that sins unconfessed are most commonly unpardon'd and unpardon'd sins will be made publick before all Angels and all the wise and good men of the world when their shame shall have nothing to make it tolerable 19. When a penitent confesses his sin the holy man that ministers to his Repentance and hears his Confession must not without great cause lessen the shame of the repenting man he must directly encourage the duty but not adde confidence to the sinner For whatsoever directly lessens the shame lessens also the hatred of sin and his future caution and the reward of his repentance and takes off that which was an excellent defensative against the sin But with the shame the Minister of Religion is to doe as he is to doe with the mans sorrow so long as it is a good instrument of repentance so long it is to be permitted and assisted but when it becomes irregular or dispos'd to evil events it is to be taken off And so must the shame of the penitent man when there is danger lest the man be swallowed up by too much sorrow and shame or when it is perceiv'd that the shame alone is a hinderance to the duty In these cases if the penitent man can be perswaded directly and by choice for ends of piety and religion to suffer the shame then let his spirit be supported by other means but if he cannot let there be such a confidence wrought in him which is deriv'd from the circumstances of the person or the universal calamity and iniquity of man or the example of great sinners like himself that have willingly undergone the yoke of the Lord or from consideration of the divine mercies or from the easiness and advantages of the duty but let nothing be offer'd to lessen the hatred or the greatness of the sin lest a temptation to sin hereafter be sowed in the furrows of the present Repentance 20. He that confesseth his sins to the Minister of Religion must be sure to express all the great lines of his folly and calamity that is all that by which he may make a competent judgement of the state of his soul Now if the man be of a good life and yet in his tendency to perfection is willing to pass under the method and discipline of greater sinners there is no advice to be given to him but that he doe not curiously tell those lesser irregularities which vex his peace rather then discompose his conscience but what is most remarkable in his infirmities or the whole state and the greatest marks and instances and returns of them he ought to signifie for else he can serve no prudent end in his confession But secondly if the man have committed a great sin it is a high prudence and an excellent instance of his repentance that he confess it declaring the kinde of it if it be of that nature that the spiritual man may conceal it But if upon any other account he be bound to reveal every notice of the fact let him transact that affair wholly between God and his own soul And this of declaring a single action as it is of great use in the repentance of every man so it puts on some degrees of necessity if the man be of a sad amazed and an afflicted conscience For there are some unfortunate persons who have committed some secret facts of shame and horror at the remembrance of which they are amazed of the pardon of which they have no signe for the expiation of which they use no instrument and they walk up and down like distracted persons to whom reason is useless and company is unpleasant and their sorrow is not holy but very great and they know not what to doe because they wil not ask I have observed some such and the onely remedy that was fit to be prescribed to such persons was to reveal their sin to a spiritual man and by him to be put into such a state of remedy and comfort as is proper for their condition It is certain that many persons have perished for want of counsel and comfort which were ready for them if they would have confessed their sin for he that concealeth his sin non dirigetur saith Solomon he shall not be counselled or directed And it is a very great fault amongst a very great part of Christians that in their inquiries of Religion even the best of them ordinarily ask but these two questions Is it lawful Is it necessary If they finde it lawful they will do it without scruple or restraint and then they suffer imperfection or receive the reward of folly For it may be lawful and yet not fit to be done It may be it is not expedient And he that will doe all that he can doe lawfully would if he durst do something that is not lawful And as great an error is on the other hand in the other question He that too strictly inquires of an action whether it be necessary or no would do well to ask also whether it be good whether it be of advantage to the interest of his soul For if a Christian man or woman that is a redeemed blessed obliged person a great beneficiary endeared to God beyond all the comprehensions of a mans imagination one that is less then the least of all Gods mercies and yet hath received many great ones and hopes for more if he should doe nothing but what is necessary that is nothing but what he is compell'd to then he hath the obligations of a son and the affections of a slave which is the greatest undecency of the world in the accounts of Christianity If a Christian will doe no more then what is necessary he will quickly be tempted to omit something of that also And it is highly considerable that in the matter of souls Necessity is a divisible word and that which in disputation is not necessary may be necessary in practise it may be but charity to one and duty to another that is when it is not a necessary duty it may be a necessary charity And therefore it were much the better if every man without further inquiry would in the accounts of his soul consult a spiritual Guide and whether it be necessary or no yet let him doe it because
The natural evils of mans life 427 4 Luke 15 7. expl 531 5 and 11.41 expl 654 82 Lukewarmness how it comes to be a sin 268 47 M MAlefactors condemn'd by the Customes of Spain are allowed respite till their Confessor supposes them competently prepared 281 56 Mark 12.34 exp 475.26 and 12.32 exp 551 41 Matthew 5.19 exp 115 18 5.22 132 34 Mercy Gods mercy and justice reconciled about his exacting of the law 120 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 how they differ 64 65 Morall the difference between the moral regenerate and profane man in committing sin 483 31 579 1 Mortification is a precept not a counsel 265 44 the method of mortifying vicious habits 314 10 11 N NAture what the phrase by nature means 399 18 In a natural estate we cannot hope for heaven 436 10 Novatians their doctrine opposed 533 8 A great objection of theirs proposed 544 24 answered 545 26 O ORiginall sin whether we derive from Adam original and natural ignorance 373 22 Adams sin made us not heirs of damnation 375 22 NOr makes us necessarily vicious 383 37 Adams sin did not corrupt our nature by a physical efficiency 383 39 Nor because we were in the loyns of Adam 384 40 Nor because of the will and decree of God 386 41 Objections out of Scripture against this doctrine answered 392 45. Vide Sin P PArdon severall degrees of pardon of sin 284 63 As repentance is so is our pardon 649 Mistakes about pardon and salvation 499 44 Some sins called unpardonable in a limited sense 542 21 What is our state of pardon in this life 571 66 In what manner and to what purposes the Church pardoneth penitents by the hand of a Priest 625 51 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what it signifies 119 21 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what it sign fies 119 22 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what they signifie 551 37 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 171 4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 172 5 Passions their violence excuseth not under the title of sins of Infirmity 508 54 Make it the great business of thy life to subdue thy passions 516 65 Perfection perfection of degrees and perfection of state 27 28 29 How perfection is consistent with repentance Cap. 1. sect 3. per tot Wherein perfection of state consisteth 329 44 Perfection in genere actus 30 45 what it is 44 13 Penances or corporal austerities 680 26 A rule for the measure of them 685 30 Which are best and rather to be chosen 685 29 Fasting prayer and alms are the best penances 685 29 They are not to be accounted simply necessary or a direct service of God 680 26 Philippians 2.12 13. eâ—p 274 55 Psalm 51.5 exp 394 47 Prayer of prayer as a fruit or act of repentance 652 80 It is one of the best penances 684 29 Priest what is the power of Priests in order to pardoning sin 625 51 Of the forms of absolution 627 53 absolution of sins by the Priest can be no more then declarative 634 58 Confession to a Priest is no part of contrition 615 The benefit of confessing to a Priest 616 43 Auricular confession to a Priest whence it descended 615 Of confessing to a Priest or Minister 678 24 Proverb a proverb contrary to truth is a great prejudice to a mans understanding 523 78 avoid all proverbs by which evil life is encouraged ibid. Prophane the difference in committing sin between the prophane moral and regenerate man 483 31 Punishment God punishes not one sin with another 682 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the use of the word 398 48 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what the word signifies 401 51 Questions Whether the practice of the Primitive Fathers denying Ecclesiastical repentance to Idolaters Murderers and Adulterers and them onely be warrantable 540 20 Whether we derive from Adam original and natural ignorance 373 22 Whether attrition with absolution pardoneth sin 638 Whether it be possible to keep the Law 17 Whether perfection be consistent with repentance Cap. 1. Sect. 3. per tot Whether sinful habits require a distinct manner of repentance 256 272 Whether every single deliberate act of sin put the sinner out of Gods favour Cap. 4. Sect. 2. per totum Whether disobedience that is voluntary in the cause but not in the effect is to be punished 388 43 490 489 R REgenerate the state of unregenerate men 472 Between the regenerate and a wicked person there is a middle state 474 26 An unregenerate man may be convinced of and clearly instructed in his duty and approve the Law 476 28 an unregenerate man may with his will delight in goodness and delight in it earnestly 478 29 The contention between the flesh and the conscience no sign of regeneration but onely the contention between the flesh and the spirit 480 29 the difference between the regenerate profane and moral man in their sinning 483 31 whence come so frequent sins in regenerate persons 484 32 How sin can be consistent with the regenerate estate 485 33 Unwillingness to sin no sign of regeneration 486 An unregenerate person may not onely desire to doe moral good things but even spiritual also 488 35. The difference between a regenerate and unregenerate man 490 35 An unregenerate man may leave many sins not onely for temporal interest but of reverence of the Divine Law 492 An unregenerate man may doe many good things for heaven and yet never come there 492 38 An unregenerate man may have received the Spirit of God and yet be in a state of distance from God 493 39 It is not the propriety of the regenerate to feel a contention within him concerning doing good or evil 497 41 The regenerate man hath not onely received the Spirit of God but is wholly led by him 498 42 Repentance the covenant of repentance when it began 4. How repentance and perfection Evangelical are consistent Cap. 1. Sect. 3. per tot That proposition rejected that every sinner must in his repentance pass under the terrors of the Law 41 6 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 how they differ 64 65 it is a whole change of state and life 66 4 its parts 71 9 the difference between the repentance preach'd to the Jews and the Gentiles 77 5 6 7 It may be called conversion 80 10 Repentance onely makes sins venial 134 34 What repentance single acts of sin require 198 43 A general repentance when sufficient 201 47 Some acts of sin require more then a moral revocation or opposing a contrary act of vertue in repentance 202 50 That proposition proved to be false that no man is ordinarily bound to repent instantly of his sin 215 7 The danger of deferring repentance 218 2 Deferring repentance differs but by accident from final impenitence 226 9 Repentance of sinful habits to be performed in a distinct manner 256 31 Seven objections against that proposition
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sophocles in Oedip. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thus one folly added to another hath great labour and vexation unquietness and difficulty for its reward But as when our blessed Saviour dispossess'd the little Daemoniack in the Gospel when the Devil went forth he roar'd and foam'd he rent him with horrid Spasmes and Convulsions and left him half dead So is every man that recovers from a vicious habit he suffers violence like a bird shut up in a cage or a sick person not to be restor'd but by Causticks and Scarifications and all the torments of Art from the dangers of his Nature 4. A vicious habit makes a great sin to be swallowed up as easily as a little one An dubitat solitus totum conflare Tonantem Radet inaurati femur Herculis faciem ipsam Neptuni qui bracteolam de Castore ducet He that is us'd to it makes nothing of Sacrilege who before started at the defrauding his Neighbour of an uncertain right but when he hath digested the first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by step and step he ventures so farre till he dares to steal the Thunderbolts from Jupiter when sin is grown up to its height and station by all its firmest measures a great sin is not felt and let the sin be what it will many of the instances pass so easily that they are not observed as the hands and feet sometimes obey the fancy without the notice of the superior faculties and as we say some parts of our prayers which we are us'd to though we attend not and as Musicians strike many single strokes upon which they do not at all consider which indeed is the perfection of a habit So we see many men swear when they know not that they do so they lie and know they lie and yet believe themselves They are drunk often and at last believe it innocent and themselves the wiser and the action necessary and the excess not intemperance Enchirid c. 8. Peccata quamvis magna horrenda cùm in consuetudinem venerint aut parva aut nulla esse creduntur usque adeò ut non solùm non occultanda verùm etiam jam praedicanda ac diffamanda videantur said S. Austin At first we are asham'd of sin but custome makes us bold and confident apt to proclaim not to conceal our shame For though at first it seem'd great yet every day of use makes it less and at last all is well it is a very nothing This is a sad state of sin but directly the case of a vicious habit and of use in the illustration of this Question For if we look upon the actions and little or great instances of folly and consider that they consider not every such Oath will pass for an indeliberate folly and an issue of infirmity But then if we remember that it is voluntary in its principle that this easiness of sinning comes from an intolerable cause from a custome of profaneness and impiety that it was nourish'd by a base and a careless spirit it grew up with a cursed inadvertency and a caitiff disposition that it could not be at all but that the man is infinitely distant from God it is to be reckoned like the pangs of death which although they are not alwayes felt yet they are violent and extreme they are fatal in themselves and full of horror to the standers by But from hence besides that it serves perfectly to reprove the folly of habitual swearing it also proves the main Question viz. that in a vicious habit there is a venome and a malice beyond the guilt and besides the sinfulness of the single actions that produce and nourish it the quality it self is criminal For unless it can be supposed that to swear frequently can at last bring its excuse with it and that such a custome is onely to be estimated according to the present notice and deliberation by which it is attended to and that to swear often can be but a little thing but to swear seldome shall be horrid and inexcusable it must be certain that the very habit it self is a state of sin and enmity against God besides the guilt of the many single actions because this customary swearing cannot be accounted so bad as it is by the value and baseness of the single actions which are scarce considered very often not known not noted at all not attended to but therefore they have their load by being effects of a cursed habit and custome Here the habit is worse then the action and hath an evil of its own 5. A vicious habit hath in it this evil appendage that in every instant of its abode it keeps us out of Gods favour we are in perpetual danger and under the eternal arrest of death even without the actions of sin without pleasure or possessing any of its baser interests It was a horrible foolery which Appianus tels of Lentulus Spinther and Dolabella that when Caesar was killed in the Senate they drew their swords and ran about the streets as if they had done the fact supposing it to be great and glorious quibus gloriâ quidem frui non contigit sed poenas dederunt easdem cum sontibus they lost their hopes of fame but yet they were punished for the fact So useless and yet so pernicious a thing is a vicious habit a man may pay the price of his lust when he thinks not of it and perish for all that he was willing to enjoy though he did not what he would This is that by which Divines use to reconcile the justice of God with the infliction of eternal pains upon temporal and transitory actions There is in unrepenting or habitual sinners an eternal spring or principle of evil and they were ready for ever to have sinned and for this preparation of minde to have sinn'd for ever it is by them affirm'd to be just to punish them for ever Now this is not true in the single actions and interruptions of grace by sin but in the habitual sinner it is more reasonable Such are they of whom the Apostle speaks They were past feeling and yet were given up unto uncleanness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which properly signifies the beginnings or little images of lust which as they are first in the introduction of lust so in such persons they are the onely remains of the old man He cannot sin as he used to doe not by his action but he sins by his habit The summe is this If to love God to delight in him to frequent holy offices to love his service to dwell in God to have our conversation in heaven to lay up our treasure and our hopes and our heart there to have no thoughts no designs no imployment but for God and for religion be more acceptable to God then to doe single actions of a prosperous piety upon so many sudden resolutions and the stock of an alternate and returning